Glucose clamping in freely moving rodents is a crucial tool in glucose metabolism, but it requires an optimal surgical approach.
RRSSC, Instech, and TS Nielsen Scientific Consult are proud to announce the Module GC hands-on
laboratory course on the glucose clamp technique in stress-free, conscious and freely moving
mice and rats.
The course has been organized annually since 2016 and was created in cooperation with Dr.
David Wasserman and the Vanderbilt Mouse Metabolic Phenotyping Center, allowing us to
benefit from their extensive experience using the state-of-the-art clamping techniques, which has
been continuously developed and refined at the Vanderbilt MMPC for nearly 20 years.
Since its inception in the late 1970s, the glucose clamp has become the gold standard for
assessing β-cell function, insulin action and glucose turnover in vivo. Over the years, the clamp
technique has been adapted and modified extensively to accommodate the vast range of model
organisms being used in metabolic research, from mouse to man. However, due to the limited
sizes of rodents, particularly mice, performing a clamp in these species poses a challenging
technical barrier to overcome, mainly because the blood volume available for sampling is small
and because the catheters for infusion and sampling need to be implanted surgically.
Consequently, clamping rats and mice requires specialized equipment and microsurgery skills in
order to obtain reliable and reproducible results.
Thus, the Glucose Clamp module aims to provide the participants with the necessary skills
to design, execute, and analyze a glucose clamp experiment in conscious, freely moving rats and
mice, taking the animal from surgery to data analysis. Course participants will have
ample opportunity to become familiar with the surgical techniques and experimental procedures
needed to clamp their rodent species of choice. Furthermore, through lectures on isotopic
tracers, experimental design considerations, and data analysis, participants will acquire the
knowledge to benefit from the full potential of the glucose clamp technique. With this, we hope to
aid those laboratories needing to perform glucose clamps regularly in implementing the
usage of this technically challenging technique at their institution.
- 7-day glucose clamping in rats and mice. This RRSSC course is co-organised with TSN (TS Nielsen Scientific Consult) and Instech.
- If you are interested in the course program, click here.