National Centre for Laboratory Animal Sciences (NCLAS) is an unique organization of its kind established in India in 1957, for spreading knowledge on the Care, Breeding, Management and Experimentation using laboratory animals in biomedical research in the country. The organization completed 53 years of its existence, this year.

It started as an unit called Laboratory Animal Information Service (LAIS) at the Indian Cancer Research Centre, Bombay (now called Advanced Centre for Treatment Education and Research in Cancer) way back in 1957 with the help of UNESCO and became a unit of Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), New Delhi in 1959. This unit for the first time undertook a survey on the conditions of laboratory animal care, breeding and experimentation in the country and felt the need for educating the biomedical fraternity on the proper care, breeding and maintenance of laboratory animals. This resulted in the initiation of a regular training course in laboratory animal sciences way back in 1968, and the publication of laboratory animal bulletins, which contained information on the laboratory animals bred, maintained and used for experimentation in various research institutions in the country. This unit was later shifted to National Institute of Nutrition ( NIN ), Hyderabad in 1976, and was expanded to provide animal support to NIN’s nutritional research and also to provide animals to other institutes within the state and it was renamed then as Laboratory Animal Information Service Centre (LAISC). In 1998, during the 7th Five Year Plan additional support came from Department of Biotechnology (DBT) under the Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, which helped the unit to reach the current status as the National Center for Laboratory Animal Sciences – NCLAS.

The NCLAS is currently meeting the breeding and experimental needs of over 180 biomedical Institutions in the country. The center consists of four wings: the experimental animal facility, the feed preparation facility, the breeding facility and the primate center. The experimental facility as the name suggests is meant for conducting animal experiments and the feed preparation and breeding facilities take care of breeding and supply of animals and animal feeds. The Primate facility that can maintain 36 rhesus monkeys, was added to the centre 8 years back for basic research and preclinical testing of drugs and vaccine using primates. The center has a staff strength of 60, including 4 scientific staff, 12 technical and administrative staff. Apart from breeding and supply of animals, the Centre regularly undertakes supply of laboratory animal feed (both maintenance and experimental) and check the health and genetic integrity of laboratory animals under its care. It also runs regular training courses annually both at the junior (6 weeks duration) and senior level (3 months duration) for laboratory animal personnel working in government and private biomedical institutions. Apart from this, need based ad-hoc training courses of shorter duration are also offered.