DIVISION OF PRIMATE RESOURCES: PRIMATE DIAGNOSTIC SERVICES LABORATORY PROJECT SUMMARY The Primate Diagnostic Services Laboratory (PDSL) plays an important role in the Center?s breeding, research and occupational health programs through timely testing and notification of veterinarians and colony managers of the virus status of all animals. The goals of this effort are threefold: 1) Periodic monitoring of the virus status of animals to identify and separate infected animals in the interest of improving the overall health of the colony, maintain specific pathogen free (SPF) groups and determine the research-readiness of individual animals for specific studies based on their virus, fungal, and parasitic status; and 2) Decrease the possibility if infected animals interfering with interpretation of study data and decrease potential for viral zoonotic disease transmission to human care providers and investigators; and 3) provide banked and characterized viral stocks, particularly SRV stocks, and concentrated virus antigen preparations of all known SRV serotypes, to be used as assay reagents in the PDSL and made available to other primate diagnostic labs upon request. These goals are achieved by working closely with the Associate Director (AD), Division of Primate Resources Operations (DPRO), Breeding Colony Management Services (BCMS), Veterinary Services (VS), Comparative Pathology Services (CPS), and Primate Service (PS) Units within the WaNPRC as well as maintaining close contacts and collaborations with other NPRC testing laboratories. Colony veterinarians and managers across the country rely on PDSL virus testing results to segregate groups of animals according to their viral status and planned use(s) in research projects.
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