Recent MS graduate Lindsey Chan published her thesis work in the premier laboratory animal journal JAALAS. Her paper, titled “Sedation but not anesthesia in two cephalopods (Sepia bandensis and Euprymna berryi) exposed to injectable anesthetic agents” is part of a special issue on invertebrate welfare.
Lindsey demonstrates that well-validated and widely used injectable anesthetics are only modestly effective in these two cephalopod species, despite there being strong genetic homology of the drugs’ targets, and demonstrated presence of the targets in the CNS of both species. The drugs she tested come from three different classes of anesthetics, each of which works well in other aquatic species (as well as in many terrestrial vertebrates). Her work is a further demonstration of the challenges of developing humane standards for cephalopod research, and an important contribution to the growing field of invertebrate welfare. Congratulations Lindsey on a high quality and high-impact publication!