Policies

Concepts and practical aspects of the tests are found under Techniques and Services. After identifying the appropriate test(s), the applicant is invited to address to the CAF supervisor via email or phone. He/she is asked to provide a short description of his/her project for evaluation. A discussion meeting between the CAF supervisor, the CAF director (Dr. Thierry Pedrazzini) and the requesting laboratory is then scheduled to decide on the final strategy and provide a cost estimate. At this point, a filled Request for Service Form is signed by both the Principal Investigator of the requesting laboratory and the CAF supervisor, and a schedule is planned for the test. Applications should be sent several weeks prior the experiments.
Priority access is on a "first come-first served" basis. Therefore, last-minute requests might be honored with a significant delay. The CAF supervisor, however, has some flexibility towards priority access, which might depend on practical aspects. The laboratory requesting service of the CAF agrees to provide the required animals for the planned experiments, and to pay the CAF the appropriate fees. The applicant also acknowledges and accepts that the final price and total number of animals required to complete the test may vary according to difficulties encountered specifically with some rodent models.

All data will be processed, presented in an appropriate way and sent as an electronic document to the applicant. The CAF personnel will be available to discuss various aspects of the test, including experimental details and interpretation of the results.
All data generated upon request in the CAF strictly belong to the applicant investigator and his institution. Thus, this data cannot be used by the CAF personnel for personal or institutional research purposes unless a formal, written agreement of collaboration is established between CAF personnel and the investigator.

Price information is available for each test at caf.emif@chuv.ch. A written estimate of the fees must be signed by the applicant before animals can be shipped to the Center.

Investigators are expected to acknowledge the use of the CAF in their publications. In addition, whenever time-consuming, labor-intensive experiments that require substantial scientific input are performed, the contribution of the CAF staff should be recognized as a scientific collaboration, and involved CAF collaborators will be authors in resulting publications according to the usual publication rules (www.icmje.org).