Master's Degree in Laboratory Animal Science and Welfare (English)

Contents

The program consists of 6 modules programmed in 3 years. In addition, the program includes a practical module and a research project.
Students may register for individual modules or for the whole Master course.

Itinerary

To obtain the master can follow two options:

- Registering the master

- Registering at each of the modules that make up the master, and finally, the final project.

Related programmes

Course in Animal Experimentation: Welfare, Legislation and Ethical Committees and Evaluation of Projects (English)
Course in Reduction and Refinement in Experimental Design and Methodology. Research and Development of Drugs (English)

Specific skills

After finishing the course the student should be able to perform all functions of a specialist in experimental animals, including: Ethical review of procedures; facilities management; knowledge and choice of experimental models; diagnosis of health status and disease control in experimental animals; anaesthesia, analgesia and euthanasia; application of strategies to reduce the number of experimental animals and refining procedures. Specifically to:
- Understand the normal behaviour and the consequences of its restriction in the main species of experimental animals;
- Understand the physiological mechanisms of the response to stress and pain;
- Apply ethical principles of the 3Rs and legislation to experimental procedures;
- Apply and promote the use of alternative methods to animal testing.
- Understand the environmental needs required by the most common species of experimental animals;
- Learn ways that favour motivation of the persons working in animal facilities;
- Designing facilities for experimental animals;
- Calculate costs and fees, budgeting.
- Understand the biology of the most common species of experimental animals;
- Manage and perform basic administration procedures and sampling in the main species of experimental animals;
- Meet the nutritional requirements and basic principles of nutrition;
- Understand and manage reproduction techniques in laboratory animals;
- Understand the principles of genetics and the main lines of rodents used in research.
- Know the diseases affecting to laboratory animals, its diagnosis and action required for each case in the main species used in research.
- Assess the health of animals and conducting health checks in accordance with international consensus;
- Perform basic autopsy procedures, sampling and parasitic analysis.
- Know the anaesthetic and analgesic methods appropriate for each species;
- Select the anaesthetic or analgesic method according to experimental requirements;
- Know the euthanasia methods appropriate to each species.
- Be able to design experiments and evaluate a wide variety of experimental designs;
- Understand the principles for refining in experimental surgical procedures;
- Know the main non-invasive methods used in experimental animals;
- Understand the stages of research necessary to develop drugs according to the ethical principles of animal research.

Transferable skills

- Solve complex problems involving the use of experimental procedures.
- Manage complex installations and personnel and equipment
- Design and conduct experimental studies.
- Understand the challenges of research in biomedicine.
- Bibliographical and data base management
- Apply statistical methods to experimental design
- Analyse and interpret scientific data
- Resolve conflicts of interest from the perspective of the ethics of animal experimentation.

Title obtained

Lifelong Learning Master's Degree in Laboratory Animal Science and Welfare