The Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has continually sought to maintain a high quality animal care program, and has specifically spent $382,000 on renovations of existing animal facilities over the last five years. In addition, we are spending roughly 5 million dollars on a 16,000 net square foot animal facility expansion as part of a new laboratory building currently under construction. One important goal in upgrading and adding to our facility has been our aim to improve canine housing rooms by replacing all our 37 worm, 15-year old plexiglass cages with large dog runs. This proposal will enable us to achieve that goal so that we may provide a uniform high standard of care for all our research dogs. Dogs housed at the center are used principally in the bone marrow transplant program originally established by Dr. E. Donnell Thomas. Growth in this program and additional needs for dogs for gene therapy studies finds us extremely crowded in our current canine facilities. Concurrent with our increased need for dogs has been improved housing standards for this species implemented by the federal government. In particular, square footage housing requirements have been increased to the point that two of our existing rooms currently holding 37 cages, stacked in double-tiers, meet the letter of the new regulations but fall short of their true intent. During the coming year we will complete construction of a new 16,000 square foot animal facility for rodents, rabbits and amphibians as part of a new 60 million dollar laboratory building. When this facility is occupied, we would like to remodel the rodent, avian and amphibian rooms in our existing building for use as dog run rooms, sized to provide at least twice the minimum housing space as required by U.S.D.A. regulations.
