In Vivo: Disease induction and pre-treatments

Introduction

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. Allowing you to: 

• 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, you can create "Diseases" to represent disease induction agents. These are treatments with a distinct set of metadata fields that are distinct from general treatments and can be administered to any animal at any time.

Note: In order for this information to sync with the Benchling Registry, an administrator must configure the Disease metadata fields and add them to the treatment entity schema.

Adding Disease Metadata Fields

1. Navigate to the Glossary section in Manage team menu

2. Select the Disease tab

3. Add a new metadata field by clicking Add category and selecting the right metadata type from the dropdown menu

4. Add the relevant information to define the category

5. Click Save to apply the changes

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

In order to use these tools, you'll need to open a study and navigate into specific pages and tabs, such as in the image below. 

The sections below discuss the steps you need to take once you are in a study in order to take your desired actions. 

Creating Diseases in Study design 

1. In the study, navigate to the Treatment groups page and click into the Disease tab

2. Click Add New 
3. In the window that pops up, use the dropdown menus to enter the disease name, dosing details, and metadata, then click Add disease 

Creating Pre-treatments in Study design 

1. In the study, navigate to the Treatment groups page and click on the Treatments tab
2. Click Add New 
3. In the window that pops up, click the button to classify the treatment as a pre-treatment 
4. Use the dropdown menus to enter the treatment name, dosing details, and metadata, then click Add treatment 

Bulk Dosing Workflow

1. In the study, navigate to the Doses page and click on Record Dose 
2. Choose the relevant option from the dropdown menu based on the action you need to take 
   
   

3. Select the disease or treatment by using the check boxes to select the disease or treatment option you are administering, then click Next  

4. Select the animals by using the check boxes to select the animals that will be treated, then click Next 
5. Confirm the date and time and the animals that the treatment is administered to in the final screen before clicking Create to record the dosing 
   • 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
     
     

Workflow-Based Administration

1. In the study, navigate to the Workflow page and click on the Dosing tab
2. Use the check boxes to select disease or pre-treatment option(s) from the list 
3. Finish defining any other parts of your Workflow and click Continue to begin executing the Workflow

Note: you can administer pre-treatments or disease induction doses at any stage, even before animals are assigned to groups. 

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.