Routine laboratory analysis for preclinical research in the pharmaceutical industry in Italy: An overview

Last year, the GEET (Italian Association for Haematology and Haematochemistry in Toxicology), which covers most pharmaceutical companies and contract laboratories in Italy, carried out an explorative survey on the analytical procedures commonly used for measuring haematological and clinicochemical parameters in laboratory animals. The aim of this survey was to check the differences between methods and procedures in order to evaluate a potential standardisation among laboratories. The GEET members provided information on the experimental procedures employed and parameters evaluated in their Research Laboratories for dog and rat samples. The variables considered in this paper are blood collection (fasting, anaesthesia, site of withdrawal, anticoagulants), urine collection (water load, preservatives), nature of sample, sample storage, analytical methods and equipment.