DIVISION OF PRIMATE RESOURCES: PRIMATE SERVICES PROJECT SUMMARY Primate Services (PS) is comprised of two functional groups, the husbandry staff and the research support staff. The husbandry staff are responsible for the daily husbandry care of the NHPs in the WaNPRC and they provide the foundation for the research performed here. In addition to providing the husbandry care for the research animals, they also provides animal transportation between the Seattle facilities as well as to and from non-WaNPRC facilities, the sanitization of macro environment within the vivarium, environmental testing of WaNPRC areas and equipment to ensure adequate sanitization has been accomplished and the provisioning of environmental enrichment working with the Behavior Management Services (BMS) unit. Maintaining isolation procedures as directed by the Veterinary Services (VS) is one of the most important responsibilities of the PS group. Since the PS staff need to enter the isolation rooms every day and also need to remove waste and soiled caging on a regular basis, they have the greatest likelihood of causing cross contamination of any group in the Center. Only by strict adherence to the isolation procedures can the pathogens be contained and the colony protected. The research staff are responsible for performing the majority of the research procedures for the DPR. They work on a daily basis with the Principal Investigators (PIs) and their staff to design, schedule and perform the research protocols within the WaNPRC. This not only entails the performance of current models and methods, but also the development of new procedures and models as seen in this past reporting period with the development of the cardiac tether model and Bluetooth ecg system, the fecal transplant procedures, electroporation and long term ART treatments. In addition to the development of new procedures, the research staff also refines current procedures to adapt to new needs that the researchers may have. A good example of this is starting to use restraint for unsedated sample collection and dose administration. Working with the BMS group to train the animals to the restraint device, the research support staff began using the Table Top Restraint Device (TTRD) developed at the Wisconsin National Primate Center or a commercially available procedure cage they have been able to eliminate the need for multiple sedations per day on PK/Tox type studies allowing for a healthier animal and less variables in the research. The PS unit is actively integrated with all units in the DPR and actively supports the WaNPRC mission of providing the appropriate environment to support outstanding biomedical research directed towards significant human health issues and nonhuman primate health and biology.
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