Rodent Surgery Core
Director: Huijing Xia, PhD (hxia1@lsushc.edu)
The Rodent Surgery Core provides investigators access, services, consultation and training to support cardiovascular research, including State-of the-Art equipment for rodent cardiovascular function assessment, behavior tests, disease modeling and surgeries. While the central focus of the core is cardiovascular research, the techniques employed are often useful to investigators in neuroscience and other fields. The Core staff will work with you to assess your needs and provide scientific assistance.
Expertise
In vivo non-invasive and invasive physiological function assessment;
Ex vivo cardiovascular function analyses;
Rodent models of hypertension, heart failure (HFrEF & HFpEF) and Stroke (ischemic & hemorrhagic).
Major Equipment:
Rodent echocardiography units (Vevo F2 and Vevo 2100); Rodent treadmills; DSI radio telemetry blood pressure recording systems; Invasive hemodynamics systems (Millar & Transonic); Stereotaxic instruments; Rodent open field apparatus; Rodent Grip strength meter; Rodent Laser speckle imager for cortical blood flow measurement; Langendorff Isolated Heart Perfusion system; Ex vivo Vascular reactivity system; Optogenetic Devices.
Service
Physiological function assessment: Blood pressure recording; Echocardiography; Treadmill exercise capacity test; Invasive cardiac hemodynamics measurements; Behavior tests; In vivo neuroactivity measurement; Ex vivo vascular function test; Ex vivo heart function test.
Disease modeling: Heart Failure/cardiac injury models (TAC and AAC induced HFrEF, LAD ligation induced HFrEF, myocardial ischemia-reperfusion induced cardiac injury, mouse and rat HFpEF models); Hypertension (Ang-II infusion, DOCA-salt, genetic modified models); Stroke (Ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke).
Surgeries: DSI telemetry implantation; Trans-Aortic Constriction; Ascending-Aortic Constriction; Left anterior descending artery ligation/myocardial ischemia-reperfusion; Middle cerebral artery occlusion; Intracerebral hemorrhagic stroke induction; Brain microinjection; Cerebral spinal fluid collection; Invasive cardiac hemodynamics; Vascular catheterization.