Sample Tracking and Study Management in Moustra

Introducing Sample Tracking and Study Management in Moustra

Two of the most common research workflows — tracking what you collected from your animals and running a structured experiment — now live in Moustra. Sample tracking and Study management are live today, giving your lab a single place to go from colony to cohort to collected specimen, with no spreadsheet in between.

Research labs produce two kinds of records that most colony management tools completely ignore: the tissue samples pulled from animals at sacrifice and the experimental protocols those animals are enrolled in. For years, labs have handled both in Excel — one sheet for the freezer box inventory, another for the treatment-group assignments, a third to cross-reference which animals yielded which tissues on which day. The result is the familiar tangle: a cohort table that doesn't match the sample log, a freezer inventory nobody fully trusts, and an experiment report that takes a full afternoon to assemble from disconnected sources.

Moustra now addresses both gaps directly.

Why This Matters

When the only tool you have is a spreadsheet, every new experiment creates new maintenance burden. You build a new tab, copy in the animal IDs, add columns for each treatment arm, and then manually link it to a separate sample inventory every time you run a tissue harvest. There is no enforcement that the ear tag in the sample log matches a real animal in your colony. There is no alert when a tumor measurement exceeds the IACUC threshold. There is no audit trail showing who assigned which animal to which group or when.

Labs running multiple concurrent studies — which is most labs — compound this over and over until the data lives in five places and no single person has the full picture.

Sample tracking and Study management solve this by rooting both workflows directly in your live colony data. Every sample traces back to a specific ear-tagged animal. Every study cohort is built from your real colony records. Nothing is re-entered; nothing drifts out of sync.

Sample Tracking: Every Specimen, Accounted For

The Sample feature gives you a structured record for every tissue specimen your lab collects. Each sample captures the details that actually matter for downstream work: tissue type, anatomic region, whether you took the full tissue or a partial portion, how many aliquots you created, the quantity per aliquot, who collected it, and when.

Status follows the specimen through its life: Collected when it first comes off the animal, Stored once it is in the freezer, Processing when it is in the pipeline, and Depleted when it has been consumed. That lifecycle is editable at any time, so your sample list always reflects reality rather than the optimistic state you recorded at harvest.

Batch Collection with Takedown Schemas

The fastest path to creating samples is the batch collection wizard. You start by selecting a Takedown Schema — a pre-defined tissue collection protocol that specifies which tissues to collect, the expected portion type, and the aliquot configuration. Schemas live at the protocol level, so the same schema can be reused across multiple studies and harvests without being re-created.

Once you pick a schema, you set the collection date, then scan or type animal ear tags one at a time. Each tag appears as a chip; duplicates are silently ignored. When you are ready, the wizard shows you a preview table — every combination of animal and schema tissue item — so you can confirm the scope before committing. One click on "Collect samples" creates all of them at once.

For a Day 14 tissue harvest on 10 animals using a three-tissue schema, that is 30 samples created in roughly a minute of work at the bench.

Labels, Inline Editing, and Archiving

Each sample has a detail page where you can adjust metadata, update the status, or print a PDF barcode label for the tube going into the freezer. Minor corrections to tissue type, region, portion, or status can be made inline directly from the sample list without opening the full detail view.

Samples that are no longer active can be archived. They disappear from the default list view but remain in the database, so your records stay complete without cluttering the working inventory.

Study Management: A Full Research Protocol Hub

The Study feature is where you run an experiment from start to finish inside Moustra. A Study is a multi-tabbed workspace covering everything from cohort assembly to final report: animals, groups, timeline, measurements, treatments, blinding, and access control, all in one place.

Building Your Cohort

Start by creating a study — give it a name, a purpose statement, an optional protocol association, and start and end dates. Then open the Animals tab and use the cohort builder to search your live colony by strain, genotype, sex, age range, cage, and litter. You multi-select candidates — the system warns you if an animal is already enrolled in another active study — and add them to the study in one action.

From there, the Groups tab lets you define treatment and control arms, assign animals to each, and color-code the groups for visual clarity throughout the rest of the study.

Randomization and Blinding

Once your cohort is assembled, you can randomize across groups with stratification controls. Choose which factors to balance across arms — sex, genotype, litter, cage, age — and optionally lock specific animals out of randomization. You can also set a seed for reproducibility. The randomization result is saved as an immutable record, giving you an audit trail of exactly how animals were assigned.

For studies that require scored endpoints, blinding prevents observer bias. Moustra generates blinded IDs — sequential or random, with an optional prefix — and users without unblinding permission see only the blinded ID and the animal's status. You can export a blinded CSV for an external statistician and unblind selectively at the appropriate stage.

Timeline and Measurements

The Timeline tab is where you schedule the experiment. Each time-point gets a name, a day offset relative to study start, and a scheduled date. When you save a time-point, Moustra automatically creates a task on the Calendar, so your team's task queue reflects the experimental schedule without any extra steps.

Measurements are recorded against individual animals at each time-point. Moustra supports numeric types — weight, tumor size, phenotype score, treatment dose — and free-text types — observation and clinical note. Each numeric measurement can carry a threshold; if the recorded value exceeds it, an alert appears in the study's KPI summary and stays visible until someone resolves it. Weight data renders as per-animal sparklines so you can spot trends at a glance without leaving the measurements table.

Treatments, Reports, and AI Assistance

The Treatments tab holds your intervention definitions: compound name, dose, unit, route, frequency, and dates. These are organizational records that your team references when entering measurement notes, keeping the protocol description in one place rather than scattered across meeting notes and email threads.

When you need a summary, the Reports tab generates a pre-computed overview: cohort breakdown, group balance, exclusion counts, time-point and task tallies, measurement counts by type, and alert counts. You can export to CSV for inclusion in a manuscript or regulatory submission.

The Assistant tab provides an AI suggestions panel where you can ask questions about the study — "How many male animals are in the control group?" or "Suggest time-points for a 28-day tumor efficacy study" — and receive answers and optional action suggestions. The assistant only proposes actions — adding animals or running a randomization, for example — and nothing is applied until you confirm it, so you remain in control of every change.

Role-Based Access for the Whole Team

PIs, postdocs, technicians, and collaborators often need different levels of access to the same study. The Access tab lets study admins grant Viewer, Editor, or Admin roles per user, with a separate "can view unblinded" permission for collaborators who need to see full animal identities. An immutable Activity log records every change — animal added, group created, measurement recorded — with actor, action, and timestamp.

Samples and Studies Together: End-to-End Traceability

The connection between the two features is where the real payoff becomes clear.

Consider an anti-tumor drug efficacy trial. You create the study, add 20 mice, randomize them into a vehicle control arm and a treatment arm, and schedule time-points for baseline weigh-ins, mid-study tumor measurements, and a Day 21 terminal harvest. On Day 21, you go to the Study's Samples tab and click "Collect samples." You select a Takedown Schema configured for tumor tissue, liver, and brain. You scan the ear tags of all 20 animals. The wizard creates 60 samples in one batch — every animal, every tissue, all linked to the study automatically.

Those samples are now visible both in the standalone sample list and filtered within the study. Every specimen carries the study association, so months later, when a collaborator asks which freezer box holds the tumor tissue from the treatment arm, the answer is a single search rather than a cross-reference exercise.

Getting Started

Both features are available now in Moustra for all accounts. Sample tracking and Study management are web-based; no additional installation is required.

To get started with samples, navigate to the Samples section of the app and click "Collect samples" to walk through the batch collection wizard. For a new study, go to Studies and click "New study" to open the creation form.

If you have questions or want a walkthrough, reach out at admin@moustra.com. We are glad to help you configure your first Takedown Schema or set up your first blinded study.