? The California National Primate Research Center (CNPRC) is proposing to construct a new building, the Virology and Immunology Laboratory (VIL) that will house the Virology and Immunology (V&I) Unit on the CNPRC campus.
The specific aims of this proposal are to: (1) address significant deficiencies of research space, forcing the CNPRC to situate Staff Scientists (mainly from the Respiratory Disease (RD) Unit) in six widely separated spaces on campus, (2) co-locate V&I researchers currently widely dispersed at the CNPRC and Center for Comparative Medicine (CCM, located on CNPRC property), (3) provide appropriate containment (e.g., level 3) facilities and other current technologies that enable researchers to investigate diseases that they are currently unable to study and (4) provide new space for recruitment of Staff Scientists in cell and gene based therapies.
These specific aims will be accomplished by providing high quality research laboratory space, research support space and office space for faculty, staff and graduate students in the (1) V&I Unit, whose research is focused on non-human primate models of ? human infectious diseases, including AIDS and (2) RD Unit, whose research is focused on non-human primate models of human respiratory diseases, including asthma. Construction of the VIL will also serve the long-term objective of expanding and integrating the research effort in the V&I Unit on the CDC/NIAID categorical pathogens. In fact, we propose to build the BSL-3 laboratories as part of the new building. This lab space is needed to make use of the BSL-3 animal quarters that exist at the CNPRC. V&I Staff Scientists work with viruses that must be handled at bio-safety level-2 (BSL-2) containment. The investigators in the Unit have developed appropriate procedures for the safe handling of these organisms and the institutional committees have approved the use of the agents in specific V&I Unit laboratories. However the physical configuration of the aging lab space of the Unit is less than optimal and requires strict adherence to the procedural approaches for containment of these pathogens. ? Hence, working conditions are not safe and Staff Scientists of the V&I Unit are only able to work in their current space through cumbersome procedures that slow progress to a crawl. The new containment labs in the VIL will be used by current Staff Scientists, new faculty recruits, and with scientists in other UCD departments or other institutions that share this investigational focus. This proposed metal frame building will be built on a new foundation with overall dimensions of 9,873 gross-square feet (GSF). The building will include 5,992 assignable square feet (ASF) of laboratory research space, 178 ASF of research support space and 1,200 ASF of office space. The research laboratory space will include wet laboratories and ten dry lab/support spaces. There will be eight offices of 120 ASF each and one office/conference space of 240 ASF. The new space will accommodate the existing research programs of V&I Staff Scientists that are focused on non-human primate models of viral diseases of humans and provide space for expansion of these activities. Construction of the proposed facility will permit consolidation of existing research activities with human pathogens in modern BSL-2 and BSL-3 containment. ? ?
