Over the last few years, institutions in North and South Dakota have made tremendous efforts to expand infrastructure to conduct biomedical research. However, as the number of investigators has grown, space in the animal facility has become a limiting factor. Requests from partner institutions like the Fargo VA to conduct collaborative research have also been handicapped by this limitation. To solve this problem and accommodate researchers in the new medical school building, a satellite vivarium was built. However, because this building was entirely state-funded, a legislative mandate capped capital costs for the entire building until one year after occupancy. This caused additional constraints, and the decision was made to forgo a cage washer in the satellite vivarium. This decision was meant to represent the middle ground between no increase in space and exceeding the budget, but in practicality, it created a bottleneck. As a result, many researchers were forced to use disposable cages for their experiments (especially when using breeding pairs, animals exposed to infectious agents, or nude mice injected with cancer cells). To address this issue we plan to renovate the existing animal space including the addition of a cage washer to be used by researchers involved in this CTR grant. We also plan to build a permanent home for the clinical research center that is adjacent to the current wet clinical lab space, thereby increased efficiency and productivity.

Public Health Relevance

DACCOTA-Alterations and Renovations Narrative: Over the past couple of years, significant progress has been made in terms of recruitment and establishment of UND as a research-based institution. However, one remaining issue is that with an increasing number of researchers, the current common animal care facility clearly will not be adequate to handle the increased load. Therefore, we plan to install a cage washer to decrease the cost of doing pre-clinical research and increase our pre-clinical research productivity, thereby generating discoveries that could be translated into humans. As we grow our pre-clinical research group and develop a productive center for clinical translational research (CTR) in the Dakota region, the proposed renovation will increase our efficiency and decrease the cost of conducting small animal translational research. Additionally, we expect that these renovations will facilitate the success of the Dakota Cancer Collaborative on Translational Activity (DACCOTA) by providing space for the additional investigators that we will hire through this grant.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)
Type
Specialized Center--Cooperative Agreements (U54)
Project #
1U54GM128729-01
Application #
9574229
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZGM1)
Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
2018-09-30
Budget End
2019-08-31
Support Year
1
Fiscal Year
2018
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of North Dakota
Department
Type
DUNS #
102280781
City
Grand Forks
State
ND
Country
United States
Zip Code
58202