The overall objective of this application is to achieve our mission of providing and maintaining consistently high quality, healthy animals for research, testing and teaching programs, assuring care and use of animals consistent with the standards of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, and provide a safe and healthy workplace for personnel who use or care for animals. This proposal seeks funding to replace the 20+year old rack and tunnel cage washers, and renovate and upgrade the utilities and space for the equipment. These improvements to the Animal Resource Program operated by the Department of Comparative Medicine will provide direct support of peer- reviewed, NIH-funded research programs. The requested improvements and purchases are directly related to brining existing systems into accordance with current requirements and best practices for animal care and use and are essential to maintain continued AAALAC accreditation and compliance with the Animal Welfare Act and other relevant regulations and guidelines. Our goal is to continually enhance and improve the Penn State Hershey Animal Resource Program to meet increasing demands as research at the institution expands into areas such as proteomics/genomics, bioinformatics, nano- and regenerative medicine and neural engineering.
