The Mission of SNPRC is to improve the health of our global community through innovative biomedical research and to serve as a national biomedical research resource to scientists in other institutions that can benefit from our expertise and nonhuman primate (NHP) colonies. In 1999, the Southwest National Primate Research Center (SNPRC) became the first new National Primate Research Center (NPRC) established since the early 1960s. The SNPRC brought a number of unique strengths to the NPRC program, stemming from a long, productive history of biomedical research and innovation using NHPs in research. Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Texas Biomed) with a biomedical research history dating to the 1940s is the host institution of the SNPRC. In this application, SNPRC has developed three new Scientific Units to better organize and focus the major research areas. Two of these Scientific Units represent research strengths developed over decades of primate-based research to bring greater emphasis to these areas. These Units are Infectious Diseases and Experimental Physiology and Genomics. The third new Unit builds on the established strengths of several investigators, and represents a new major area of focus for SNPRC; Regenerative Medicine and Aging. These Units carry out research with multiple species of primates including macaques, baboons and marmosets and are integrated into the overarching aims of the SNPRC which include research programs involving NHP models of human disease.
The aims are:
Aim 1 : To maintain healthy and well-characterized breeding and research colonies of several NHP (NHP) species for biomedical research, and to make them available to the scientific community.
Aim 2 : To provide broad services in primate research to the national research community with an emphasis on specialized technologies and capabilities many of which are unique to the SNPRC. SNPRC provides these services to enhance collaborative opportunities to both internal and external investigators. The extensive expertise with diverse species of NHPs provides investigators with perspectives on how best to accomplish the goals of research projects, thereby increasing the productivity and efficiency of the research, and strengthening the value of the data derived from it.
Aim 3 : To maintain and to enhance the physical and administrative infrastructure of the NPRC, so that it can best serve biomedical research. SNPRC has undergone significant changes in the Administrative structure in the past year. The benefits of these changes to efficiency and productivity are already apparent.
Aim 4 : To advance the training and education of staff, students, and visitors in the care and use of NHPs in biomedical research.
Aim 5 : To contribute to advances in science and translational medicine via publication of results obtained from research with NHPs and educational outreach to the public.
The Mission of the Southwest National Primate Research Center (SNPRC) is to improve the health of our global community through innovative biomedical research using nonhuman primate (NHP) models of human disease. SNPRC maintains colonies of marmosets, rhesus macaques, chimpanzees and baboons to support the national biomedical research effort. The Center has established research programs in infectious diseases, physiology, genomics, behavior, regenerative medicine and aging.
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