Germ free mice, also called Axenic, are animals free of all foreign life forms apart  from itself (as determined within the limitations of the detection methods available).

Elimination of gastrointestinal microflora increases host susceptibility to infectious disease and for this reason germ free animals must be housed under more strict conditions of Bioexclusion.

For decades the choice for mice housing and bioexclusion was to use Isolators, because they can maintain a high positive pressure and their excellent level of protection and bioexclusion is well known.

However, the need to have a more versatile system that allowed working in a more ergonomic and flexible way, also increasing density, began to grow.

Thus, the idea of ​​combining the advantages of the isolators, with the advantages of the classic IVC: a more flexible system, with greater density given by the increased number of cages in a certain space, and the effective separation between the cages’ environment that avoid the risk of cross-contamination.

This led to the birth of the ISOcage, which is a cage-level isolator to house germ free or gnotobiotic animals.

ISOcage is a hermetic cage with HEPA filter at cage level that ensures high pressure mode so as to be an ideal solution for Bioexclusion applications.