Research efforts concerning the viral study aspect of the contract are focused to determine the safety of the national blood supply in the United States and its military forces serving throughout the world; in the public health safety of animal derived food products; and the development and improvement of sensitive and specific diagnostic tests which will permit the introduction of therapeutic regimens that will either radiate the disease process or block the progression of the various infectious agents known, or suspected, to result in disease that has collectively been identified as Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs). The contractor provides care, housing, and research support for nonhuman primates assigned to the Laboratory of Central Nervous System Studies, NINDS, in their effort to accomplish these goals. The contractor is responsible for monitoring nonhuman primates that have been, or will be, inoculated via various routes, with tissues known, or suspected to be, infected with one of the TSE agents, recording findings, and performing appropriate procedures to provide the Project Officer with animal samples for evaluation. The objective of the rhesus breeding aspect of the contract is to develop a colony of rhesus macaques capable of providing NINDS scientists with an uninterrupted supply of age-specific, disease-free macaques to continue on-going research projects and initiate new studies.
