This proposal requests funds to support the Third Annual Comparative Medicine Resource Directors' Meeting. The purpose of this meeting is to provide a forum for Directors of Resource Centers funded by the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) to discuss common issues and problems and share ideas for common solutions. The meeting will be held for 1.5 days on June 7-8, 2001 at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, the site of three of the current P40 Resource Centers. The first two meetings were held in April 1998 (University of Miami/RSMAS, Miami, Florida) and April 1999 (American Type Culture Collection, Manassas, Virginia). The discussion and follow-up action items of these meetings helped Resource Directors recognize the commonality of many of the issues they face and helped them to deal with a variety of common issues and problems. Topics will include tracking usage of resources, intellectual property rights issues, and reports on progress of new NCRR-funded programs. Four additional meetings of NCRR grantees will be held immediately before and after the Directors' meeting: a Genetic Management Workshop (a direct result of a recommendation at the 1999 meeting) on June 6, 2001 and meetings of the Specific Pathogen Free Rhesus Macaque Colony grantees, the Chimpanzee Biomedical Research Colony grantees, and the Mutant Mouse Research Resource Center Principal and Co-principal Investigators. Because of the overlap in participants, grouping the four additional meetings with the Resource Directors' meeting will provide a cost-effective, time-efficient means for NCRR-funded grantees to have discussions that will benefit from the synergism of face-to-face discussions.
