Taconic Biosciences has brought innovation to mouse and rat colony management for decades.
Over the past decade, research has increased in complexity requiring specialized experience in model generation, colony management, and project management to facilitate discovery while maintaining efficient resource usage.
Maintaining this wealth of expertise and the associated resources in-house can be cost-prohibitive and challenging, resulting in the need to rely on external partners for colony management and model generation. Despite the ever-changing needs of researchers, contract colony management services have primarily remained the same, failing to meet the demands of modern research while maintaining a classic fee-for-service structure that places all risk on the researcher.
Over the past several decades, Taconic's capabilities have expanded globally, providing researchers with access to a comprehensive ecosystem of support that extends beyond colony management to both downstream needs and model generation capabilities. Taconic's capabilities and service offerings are coupled, enabling researchers to work with a single provider to meet their study needs while enjoying a more streamlined integrated process at any stage of a project.
Taconic's approach to colony management raises the bar and redefines what researchers can expect from the contract breeding industry: a holistic stewardship of customer resources, enhanced communication, and timelines.
Researchers should expect more from their contract breeding service providers. Instead of a single service offering such as animal housing, Taconic provides researchers with fully customized solutions based on their individual study needs. This is supported by robust embryology, genetic analysis, and animal health capabilities.
Specialized, expert-led teams identify project risks and assumptions enabling Taconic to proactively manage project deliverables and timelines holistically. This ensures that the triple constraints of money, time, and quality are intelligently managed in the best manner possible.
We know from experience that research studies rarely go according to plan, with unexpected delays occurring at any stage of the project. To prevent these delays from negatively impacting your project timeline, Taconic proactively manages projects and utilizes multiple approaches to accelerate timelines to cohort delivery.
Taconic is the only service provider to support every project with a complete ecosystem of interdisciplinary expertise. This means that your team can focus on their studies with the peace of mind of an expert team supporting them.
Taconic's unique Strategy Design Group specializes in providing complete project charters that go above and beyond the traditional scope of work. These documents provide a complete understanding of a project's risks and how these are shared in a manner that will redefine what you can expect from a contract breeding partner.
Project management is key to moving projects forward and mitigating delays that could negatively impact project goals. With Taconic's Cage+™, researchers can be assured that our dedicated project managers will proactively communicate your project updates throughout all phases.
Taconic invests in your research by reducing the unknowns of your projects wherever possible. Taconic Cage+™ mitigates traditional fee-for-service issues that researchers face when engaging colony management providers. Our solution:
eTACONIC® enables principal investigators, outsourcing managers, procurement managers, and veterinarians transparent access to their Colony Management and Model Generation project data, as well as robust on-demand reporting.
Upholding proper animal welfare standards is a core value at Taconic. We have instituted robust measures to safeguard against overproduction through all phases of a project. By doing so, we help to ensure each animal contributes in a meaningful way to your studies.
Strains of mice and rats utilized
Breeding projects completed
Mouse models available for use in breeding projects
Full model generation capabilities to develop novel, custom lines
Every breeding project is different in its complexity, needs, and timeline to cohort delivery. At Taconic, we maintain flexible housing options to fit the specific needs of any project with the ability to import animals from any source. Additionally, we employ robust supporting capabilities, including diet conditioning, water supplementation, biospecimen collection, and surgical modifications.
Taconic offers multiple speed-to-cohort options that leverage in vitro fertilization (IVF) to reduce timelines and support upstream model generation such as RapidEXPANSION™ and ExpressMODEL®. These services enable the production of age-matched cohorts, anywhere from 20 to over 600 mice at any Taconic Health Standard including those suitable for microbiome studies. Additionally, we offer cryopreservation and cryorecovery options to both protect your lines from loss, genetic drift, and position for future large-scale recovery and production using FRapid Expansion.
Taconic offers a suite of genotyping and genetic analysis services, including copy number analysis, transgene zygosity analysis, transgene mapping analysis (TgMA), gene expression analysis, and SNP testing. Our PhD-level geneticists utilize these techniques to ensure that the genetic integrity of every colony is maintained throughout the lifecycle of the project. Additionally, 3rd party partners are brought in to provide additional services with no separate effort on the researcher's part.
Taconic's "ecosystem of support" for your research project enables project success in multiple ways. Scientific Program Managers with years of breeding and colony management experience oversee all projects, our Strategy Design Team creates in-depth project charters for all breeding plans, and Project Managers utilize our unique reporting platform to communicate project updates on a regular basis. Our operational support and subject matter experts drive success and mitigate problems at each stage of a project.
Globally harmonized health standards with veterinarian oversight: no matter your location or where your project is performed, your animals carry a consistent Taconic Health Standard to facilitate consistency in your studies and ease of importation to your vivarium. Breeding colonies can also be migrated to a different health standard to fit study needs or further investigate the potential impacts of tolerated pathogens and the microbiome.
Taconic's fully customized platform — eTACONIC® — provides enterprise-grade data that provides forecasting and key metrics of inventory, shipment, health reports, financials, and more to ensure complete transparency and alignment with project goals. This platform is available on-demand to everyone involved in your project, and Project Managers utilize this tool in their regular communications.
I want to share my gratitude for the above-and-beyond partnership that Taconic has shared with us. We had two separate projects which required multiple breeding strategies to be developed. Despite knowing that we likely would proceed with only a single study, Taconic developed and provided us with multiple detailed options that included strategy, timeline, and cost for each project. Each of our questions were addressed promptly, with Taconic's planning enabling us to make informed decisions quickly. Additionally, this careful planning accelerated the production timeline, allowing for our studies to be initiated early.
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