Knowledge of Biobehavioral Organization Can Facilitate Better Science: A Review of the BioBehavioral Assessment Program at the California National Primate Research Center

SIMPLE SUMMARY: The BioBehavioral Assessment (BBA) Program was established in 2001 at the California National Primate Research Center to provide quantitative information on rhesus monkeys’ “intrinsic characteristics.” These characteristics such as temperament and stress responsiveness affect many aspects of an animal’s functioning and can be used to better manage the colony, and to select animals that are more homogeneous for research studies. Here, we review the BBA Program and describe how others have used this information in the design of their studies. We also describe results of studies aimed at understanding what experiences, both prenatal (e.g., exposure to stress) and postnatal (such as rearing), contribute to variation in intrinsic characteristics. The use of data such as these to identify subgroups of individuals with a greater risk for health-related outcomes is an animal model equivalent of a new trend in medicine, namely, precision medicine. Use of BBA data can also lead to a reduction in the number of animals needed in experimental studies. ABSTRACT: Animals vary on intrinsic characteristics such as temperament and stress responsiveness, and this information can be useful to experimentalists for identifying more homogeneous subsets of animals that show consistency in risk for a particular research outcome. Such information can also be useful for balancing experimental groups, ensuring animals within an experiment have similar characteristics. In this review, we describe the BioBehavioral Assessment Program at the California National Primate Research Center, which, since its inception in 2001, has been providing quantitative information on intrinsic characteristics to scientists for subject selection and balancing, and to colony management staff for management purposes. We describe the program and review studies relating to asthma, autism, behavioral inhibition, etc., where the BBA Program was used to select animals. We also review our work, showing that factors such as rearing, ketamine exposure, and prenatal experience can affect biobehavioral organization in ways that some investigators might want to control for in their studies. Attention to intrinsic characteristics of subject populations is consistent with the growing interest in precision medicine and can lead to a reduction in animal numbers, savings in time and money for investigators, and reduced distress for the animals.