The mission of the Great Lakes Regional Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases (GLRCE) Animal Research and Immunology Core (ARIC) is to provide professional research services in support of the development of vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics against NIAID Category A, B and C agents and to support GLRCE under emergency situations, marshalling wet laboratory infrastructures and biodefense expertise for the RCE network. During the previous funding period, SARC established infrastructures at the University of Chicago and at the Howard Taylor Ricketts Laboratory (located at Argonne National Laboratory), state-of-the-art BSL-2/3 and ABSL-2/3 research space, enabling work and scientific training under standardized, safe laboratory practices on NIAID Category A-C agents. The GLRCE ARIC acquired CDC registration and certification to sustain a flourishing select agent program that already encompasses several different A-C agents: Y. pestis (plague), B. anthracis (anthrax), R. typhi (typhus), R. rickettsii (Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever), R. conori (Mediterranean Spotted Fever), and MRSA (drug resistant S. aureus). ARIC uses a web-based portal (www.glrce.org) to advertise and make research services available to users in the research community, which includes virulence studies in animal models, vaccine and immune responses studies, challenge experiments, characterization of immune responses to immunization or infection, preparation of immunological reagents and assays, drug resistance and therapy studies, measurements of microbial replication in vitro and in vivo, and animal pathology studies. For the next funding period, GLRCE ARIC proposes to provide standardized, high quality animal model systems, to develop and sustain aerobiology systems, to develop immunological tests, reagents and correlates of immunity, and to develop and sustain in vitro testing of small molecule inhibitors for antibiotic activity on NIAID category A-C agents.
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