The purpose of the current application is to obtain support for the internal build-out of a state-of-the-art CRBF in the new, $40 million Paul D. Coverdell Building for the Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute at the UGA. The current application requests $2 million from the National Center for Research Resources to be matched with $6.26 million from UGA sources. This project addresses one of the Institution's most immediate biomedical infrastructure priorities: the creation of a CRBF. Construction of the CRBF will support extramurally-funded, health-related investigations by researchers both in the Coverdell Building and across campus. Justification for construction of the new CRBF is readily apparent from review of the recent and continuing trend for expansion in the use of rodents at the UGA. Rodents are important models for a number of diseases that affect humans, toxicological evaluation of xenobiotics and environmental agents, drug design and development, mammalian genetics, and many aspects of comparative medicine. The UGA experienced more than a three-fold increase in rodent use in FY 2001 and is currently operating at near capacity. This rapid increase can be expected to continue due to the following: 1) the 70 percent increase in National Institutes of Health (NIH) awards in the past year, 2) the increasing availability of transgenic mice to biomedical researchers, 3) commitment to hire eight new eminent scholars in the health sciences, 4) participation in the newly formed Georgia Cancer Coalition, and 5) the growing number of junior faculty pursuing biomedical research projects.
