Pk Studies require precise planning and execution to ensure essential timepoints are not missed. Animals are dosed and planned bleeds at set timepoints are carried out according to the time lapsed from dosing. When many dose and bleed times across multiple animals are being managed, it is easy to miss an upcoming timepoint clash where additional support or study design update is required.
Benchling In vivo Data tables can support you both in design and execution of your Pk studies as detailed in the steps below.
Create a new data table
In your study navigate to the Data tables page
Click Create new Data table
Add a table name and select Custom from the type dropdown.
Order the animals by sorting according to column by clicking on the column headers
Select the animals to be added to this table.
Creating a PK dosing column:
Now that you have created a table you can build up the relevant columns in this table by using the Add column button on the tool bar.
In this dropdown click Timestamp: PK dose.
Add a column name that will be displayed for this dose time column.
A form will appear for you to fill in some information needed to create this column
Start time: Confirm the date and time that the first animal in this session will have the dose administered at.
Time between doses: define the time interval needed between each dose to allow you sufficient time to work through each animal in this session. The times will be automatically calculated starting at the time set for the first animal in Start time.
Timestamp Clash (optional): By entering a value in minutes here you will receive a warning when timepoints are overlapping according to this time interval. Note: you must have at least one PK Bleed column to trigger this warning.
By setting this clash window to 2 minutes I will be warned if a timepoint is on or within 2 minutes of another. I.e: warning that dose is required at 12:02 but the next bleed time is 12:03 or 12:04.
Creating PK bleed columns:
Bleed times are calculated according to a defined time from a particular PK dose column
Use the add column dropdown to add a Timestamp: PK bleed column.
To change the dosing column that this is being calculated from, use the dropdown to select another column.
Define the time interval in either minutes or hours from the dose time.
Click Add
Once this have been added to the table you will see a column with the times for dosing and the times for each bleed timepoint.
Dose columns are editable so you can click enter on your keyboard to update this to the exact current time at any time.
Note: Once dosing is complete you can lock the column from futher changes by clicking on the downwards arrowhead in the column header and selecting the "lock column" option
Bleed columns are not editable as these are calculated from the dose time.
To record a accurate bleed time add a new column beside this of the type Timestamp and enter this time by double clicking into the cell or clicking enter on your keyboard to record the current time.
Registering PK samples
Use the collect samples option from the animals page in your study to create blood samples in bulk.
You can use the timestamps recorded in the data table for the appropriate samples by copying and pasting these into the sample registration table across two open tabs.
To copy additional information you can create additional columns mirroring the sample registration table such as a number column for blood volume and a text column for comments that can all be copied and pasted in to the animal registration table. See video below
Identifying clashes:
A time point clash warning is displayed as so:
To correct for this, you can change the future dose times to avoid clashes with bleed times or ask a colleague to aid you in completing these tasks on time.
Navigating through the cells in the Data table:
To move between cells ether click Tab on the keyboard to move across a row or Enter on the keyboard to move down a column to the next animal
If you want to move from timestamp to comment and then onto next animal then you can set up a navigation flow using the Configure navigation option in the toolbar.
