In Vivo: Disease induction and pre-treatments

Overview

The Disease Induction & Pre-Treatment Dosing update in Benchling In Vivo enables users to administer disease induction treatments or pre-treatments to animals before they are assigned to study groups. This feature enhances workflows by supporting bulk dosing and workflow-based administration, improving data tracking and efficiency.

Key Benefits

• Administer disease induction treatments to any animal.

• Perform bulk dosing for efficiency and accuracy.

• Track pre-treatment dosing across all study animals.

• Enhance protocol flexibility by modeling disease induction agents in study design and reports.

• Automatically assign a disease induction date when administering a disease in bulk.

How to Configure the Feature

During study design, users can create "Diseases" to represent disease induction agents. These are treatments with a distinct set of metadata fields separate from general treatments and can be administered to any animal at any time.

Note: An administrator must configure the Disease metadata fields and add them to the treatment entity schema to sync this information with the Benchling registry.

1. Adding Disease Metadata Fields

1. Navigate to the Glossary section in Manage team.

2. Select the Disease category.

3. Click on Add New Metadata Field.

4. Define relevant fields

5. Click Save to apply the changes.

2. Including Disease Induction Agents in the Treatments Glossary

The disease induction agent names used in studies are sourced from the same list as treatments. Ensure that:

• The treatments library includes the necessary names.

• The schema has been added to the In Vivo Sync application configuration to allow searching and selecting the appropriate disease or treatment name for entity linking in your Benchling tenant.

How to Use the Feature

1. Creating Diseases in Study design 

1. Navigate to the Treatment Groups section.

2. Click the Disease tab.

3. Select Add New.

4. Enter the Name, dosing details, and metadata.

5. Click Save.

2. Creating Pre-treatments in Study design 

1. Navigate to the Treatment Groups section.

2. Click the Treatments tab.

3. Select Add New.

4. Choose a classification:

   • Pre-Treatment (administered at any time to any animal)

   • Disease Induction (applied before study group assignment)

5. Select the treatment name.

6. Enter relevant metadata and dosing information, if required.

7. Click Save.

3. Bulk Dosing Workflow

1. Go to the Doses page in your study.

2. Select Record Pre-Treatment or Record Disease.

3. Apply doses to multiple animals simultaneously.

4. Verify the date and time, then confirm administration.

5. If administering a disease, the disease induction date will be automatically assigned to all animals. To opt out, uncheck the box at the bottom of the page.

4. Workflow-Based Administration

1. Open the Workflow setup.

2. Select a Disease or Pre-Treatment option.

3. Administer pre-treatments or disease induction doses at any stage, even before animals are assigned to groups.

5. Tracking & Reporting Enhancements

• Diseases are displayed separately from treatments in the study information tab of reports

• Graphs now allow plotting data as days post disease induction date rather than post tracking date.

Important Considerations

• Treatment Lookup: Disease induction agent names will appear in all treatment-linked schemas, not just disease induction-specific schemas.

• Registry Syncing: Disease induction treatments sync to the registry under the treatment schema.  A new classification field will be added soon to differentiate diseases and pre-treatments from standard experimental treatments.