This application requests support alterations and renovations scheduled to be carried out in the John Hopkins Medical Institutions. Two major projects are included. The first is reconfiguration and renovation of space currently used as laboratories to provide expanded and centralized cage wash and personnel support areas. These facilities and their associated fixed equipment are needed to support animal care space which already exists in the Taylor Research Building of the School of Medicine and also in anticipation of the needs for the services which will be generated by 17,000 square feet of animal housing facilities now under construction in the adjoining Rutland Avenue Building. These centralized laboratory animal services facilities allows consolidation of programs now in place in other parts of the institution and permit a significant upgrading in the level of animal care that can be provided to large numbers of biomedical researchers who will be occupying the new research building when it is completed in 1991. Among the groups to occupy this building will be the investigative and diagnostic laboratories of the Division of Comparative Medicine. These will all be moved to the new structure with the exception of the animal autopsy facility. Although it will not be moved, this facility is in need of upgrading and improvement to reflect the current health and safety standards. Thus, request is made for down-draft autopsy tables, a down-draft trimming area, and replacement of existing wooden cabinets with more appropriate and sanitizable impervious surfaces. This facility is a critical element in the diagnostic programs of the laboratory animal medicine group; the improvement will result in a much more appropriate facility than the one currently in use. Both these projects reflect a coordinated approach to improving and upgrading animal facilities within the medical institutions. Over the past five years the institution has spent over $4 million on capitol improvements related to the laboratory animal care program and is now expanding $3.4 million on the additional space noted above.
