The Washington Regional Primate Research Center (WaRPRC) has a long and successful history of biomedical-related research utilizing non-human primates. The long-term goal of the WaRPRC is to optimize support for significant, highly-relevant biomedical research utilizing non-human primates. The short-term goal of the WaRPRC is to increase the available BSL2/3 housing to optimally support current research protocols and future grant projects requiring BSL2/3 housing facilities. To meet this end, the WaRPRC has developed this grant application to support expansion into an almost new, state-of-the-art vivarium formerly owned by the Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Company (BMS). Expansion into this facility would allow the addition of approximately 540 cage spaces available for non- human primates house in BSL2/3 level conditions, thereby more than doubling the cage space available at the WaRPRC for highly relevant biomedical research projects, such as AIDS-related investigation into vaccine development, pathogenesis and therapeutics.
The Specific Aims of this application are: 1) to convert the BMS vivarium facility to optimized, standard BSL2/3 housing for non-human primates and 2) to expand the capabilities of the WaRPRC to support additional areas of research, including maternal-fetal and neurobehavioral programs. This application seek support for limited modification of the facility and purchase of equipment for the former BMS vivarium for conversion into a BSL2/3 housing area suitable for non-human primates. This conversion will allow a significant improvement in support of current BSL2/3 AIDS-related projects, as well as expansion of similar projects in the future.
