This application requests funding to modify existing chimpanzee facilities in order to fulfill the following long-term objectives: (1) to enable an increase in the number of chimpanzees that can be actively maintained and used in infectious disease research at any point in time, (2) to expand the capacity for maintaining chimpanzees being held for future protocols, (3) to provide access to outdoor enclosures for chimpanzees used in research protocols or held for future experiments, and (4) to establish emergency power capability for ABSL-2 chimpanzee research facilities.
The specific aims of this application are (1) to renovate nine ABSL-2 chimpanzee housing buildings by creating 40 outdoor runs, and (2) to install an emergency power system for 18 ABSL-2 chimpanzee research buildings. The nine buildings that will be renovated contain indoor, built-in individual cages (total of 47 cages) for animals used for infectious disease studies. We propose to renovate the buildings so that an outdoor portion is created for each cage, thereby providing the chimpanzees the opportunity to go outdoors when research criteria permit. The additions also will provide greater flexibility for housing chimpanzees by enabling some animals to be pair-housed. This capability will increase the number of chimpanzees that can be used in ABSL-2 studies simultaneously, and the number that can be held for future studies. The net result of the proposed renovations is to increase our capacity for infectious disease studies that require the use of chimpanzees in ABSL-2 containment, to bring our chimpanzees facilities up to generally accepted standards, and to protect against catastrophic loss of animals and research results consequent to power outages.
