In order to assure reproducible animal experiments, the experiments must be performed by appropriate methods using defined laboratory animals. Russell and Burch proposed the term “dramatype” as the result of the effects of proximate environmental factors, e.g. food, housing condition and microbiota, on the phenotype in their 1959 book “The Principles of Humane Experimental Technique”. Therefore, the dramatype must be uniform to achieve reproducible animal experiments and animals having such uniform dramatypes are defined as laboratory animals. While, they also developed the three Rs (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement) principle for ethical use of animals in animal experiments. The 3Rs was stated in Law for the Humane Treatment and Management of Animals in 2005. In this manuscript, I described basic knowledge pertaining to genetic control, environmental control, microbe control and the appropriate animal experiment for beginners.

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Purpose: Rat liver tumor models have been improved and are widely used for various preclinical studies in interventional oncology. The purpose of this exhibit is: (1) To learn about the techniques of preparation of rat liver tumor models. (2) To learn about the interventional techniques for intra-arterial therapy in rats. (3) To learn about the anatomical variations of hepatic artery in rats.
Contents: (1) Cell culture methodologies and tumor implantation procedures, e.g. direct injection, portal vein injection and splenic parenchymal injection. (2) Tumor cell lines and animal models in terms of hepatocellular carcinoma and colorectal cancer, e.g. McA-RH7777 in SD rat and RCN-9 in F344 rat. (3) Transcatheter arteriography techniques, carotid artery approach and femoral approach with/without the combination of laparotomy. (4) Type and frequency of the anatomical variations of hepatic artery.
Summary: Image-guided intra-arterial therapy in a rat liver tumor model is feasible and useful for preclinical studies in interventional oncology.

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Rabbits are the smallest animal species available for experiments of vascular IVR with the same devices used in humans. The mindset in animal experiments is described in the general statement. It is important to keep in mind the respect for animals in experiments and this mindset enables reproducible experiments.
Breeds and characteristics of rabbits used for experiments, as well as basic issues in the management of rabbits, are described in this paper. Next, anatomical issues necessary for IVR in rabbits are demonstrated. Last, it is introduced how to construct a liver tumor model with the VX2 tumor.
The importance of basic research is recognized by many IVRists, but in fact engagement in basic research while pursuing busy daily clinical practice is a great obstacle for doctors with no experience in basic research. We would be happy if this paper would be of some help for such doctors.
We expect a large number of basic studies to be conducted in Japan in the near future that will be helpful to the development of the world's first minimally-invasive treatment.

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In recent years, swine have been used increasingly in animal research conducted to evaluate interventional radiology (IVR) treatments, owing to the similar anatomies and physiologies between humans and swine. Other advantages of swine are their ease of handling, their easy availability from commercial suppliers, being relatively inexpensive, and generally in good health. For an experiment to be successful, it is particularly important to establish the objective of the IVR research and to create a detailed protocol. Because the research protocol cannot be modified in the laboratory after starting the experiments, the protocol should be thoroughly discussed with colleagues before starting the experiments to ascertain whether they can be performed successfully. In this report, we describe the anatomical and physiological characteristics of swine, breeding methods, anesthetic methods, angiographic imaging, and IVR research suitable for using swine.

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The beagle is one of the most popular species of dog for animal experiments because it has a calm personality, short hair, high reproductive capacity and appropriate size. Moreover, it is easy to perform surgical procedures on it, to observe its behavior and symptom, and to collect frequent test samples such as blood and urine. Therefore, the beagle is commonly used for experiments in various fields such as pharmacology, physiology, toxicity and so on. During the experiments, it is important to understand their character to prevent bites. For that reason, we should treat them carefully depending on their own personality. This paper describes the basic technique and knowledge of the dog experiments specifically, retention, medication, sampling, anesthesia, physiological characteristics, methods for rearing dog, and finally, we give an example of our experimental protocol using IVR technology.

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