What is a Congruency Review?

A congruency review is a side by side comparison of a proposal (grant, award, contract, subaward, etc.) to a protocol to ensure that all animal activity outlined in that proposal has been approved by the Yale University IACUC and is contained in an approved animal protocol.  A congruency review is required for all funding that uses live vertebrate animals to ensure that the work described in the proposal comports with an active, approved protocol. Yale has a one-to-many/many-to-one system which means one funded proposal can be linked to one or many protocols, and one protocol can be linked to one or many proposals.

What are we looking for during our review?

The items we look at during our review include but are not limited to: 

• General scope of work - disease area, target organs, and/or biological target being studied, etc.
• Species – sex, age, numbers, strains, potential clinical issues, breeding, etc.
• General procedures including administration of agents, blood/tissue collection, antibody generation, imaging, behavioral studies, etc.
• Experimental and therapeutic agents.
• Surgical procedures.
• Euthanasia method.
• Death as an endpoint – any procedures that suggest death as an endpoint (USDA pain category E) or survival curves generated (Note:  if a modification to the protocol is required to cover death as an endpoint studies, that modification must be reviewed by the full IACUC committee at a monthly IACUC meeting).
• Personnel conducting animal work.
• Collaborators (internal or external, subawards out of Yale) conducting animal work for proposal.