Specific Aim 1 is to design and construct additional chimpanzee facilities that will provide housing for 40 to 60 additional animals and complement the facility construction currently in the design development phase (for 100 animals) in the recently-awarded Chimpanzee Biomedical Research Grant (CBRG) from the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR). The housing, management and health care of infected chimpanzees require specialized knowledge and experience to provide for their physical, psychological and social needs. The facilities are designed to allow for chimpanzee biomedical research and provide high quality, long-term housing of chimpanzees chronically infected with transmissible agents that pose a risk to humans. This will provide a scarce resource for national health research priorities over the next twenty years and the chimpanzee populations in an enriched environment that allows social group housing of animals with similar experimental histories.
In Specific Aim 2, the DVS will provide an innovative program that has a national reputation for high quality chimpanzee research, care and welfare. The biomedical research infrastructure and experience is already in place to support sophisticated on-site or off-site research support for investigators using the chimpanzee model. These facilities will allow the investigators to continue to maintain National Institutes of Health (NIH) chimpanzees in compliance with all current United States Department of Agriculture, Public Health Service, and accreditation regulatory standards and, in fact, will more closely meet the public's expectations for maintaining chimpanzees in an enriched environment.
In Specific Aim 3, these proposed facilities will assist in meeting the expressed critical program needs for long-term chimpanzee biomedical research facilities as expressed by both the NIH and NCRR Director of Comparative Medicine and the Program Director for the NCRR Chimpanzee Management Plan (ChiMP).
