The University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford has ten faculty members in basic and clinical sciences conducting externally funded research in parasitology, virology, immunology, carcinogenesis, behavioral neuropharmacology, neurophysiology, cell biology, and experimental surgery. Rabbits, mice, rats and hamsters are the mammals studied at present. The animal care facility and program received its 4th consecutive 3-year full accreditation from AAALAC in November 1991. To meet the needs of present and anticipated research projects while remaining in full compliance with federal laws and guidelines, three improvements in the animal care facility are required: (1) a proper surgical suite for aseptic, survival surgery; (2) a means of preventing microbial infection spreading between animals differing in strain, source, or experimental treatment, which are housed in one of the nine available holding rooms; (3) effective procedures for dealing with power outages of up to several hours occurring several times per year. The lack of a dedicated surgical suite, the potential for spread of infections, and the lack of back-up power are all issues of concern in previous AAALAC accreditation reports. It is proposed to rectify these problems in an integrated fashion. (1) Transfer of the animal caretaker's office and the disposal freezer out of the building zone with rapid air exchange (15 changes per hour), and remodeling to rationalize space usage within this zone, will allow surgical scrub and preparation/recovery rooms to be adjoined to the present surgery room without eliminating any animal holding rooms. (2) The need for greater isolation within individual holding rooms will be accomplished by means of a commercial micro-isolator system with sufficient cages for small groups of animals, (3) The micro-isolation cages also will provide an inexpensive means of protecting critical animals (by allowing their removal to unaffected rooms) during HVAC failures.
