This Conference Grant application requests funds to support the Fourth Comparative Medicine Resource Center Directors Meeting. The purpose of this meeting is to provide a forum for Directors of Resource Centers funded by the NCRR to discuss common issues and problems and share ideas for common solutions. The main meeting will be held for one and a half days on November 18, 2002 to November 19, 2002 in San Antonio Texas, the location of the SFBR and the Southwest National Primate Research Center (SNPRC). The first three meetings were held in April 1998 (University of Miami/Rosenstiehl School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, Miami, Florida), April 1999 (American Type Culture Collection, Manassas, Virginia), and June 2000 (Jackson Laboratories, Bar Harbor, Maine). The discussion and follow-up action items of these meetings have helped Resource Directors recognize the commonality of many of the issues they face and helped them to deal with a variety of common concerns. Topics to be discussed or presented at this meeting will include the current state of stem cell research, strategies for maximizing cost recovery at Resource Centers, updates from each of the Directors on their programs, and reports on progress of new NCRR-funded programs. Following the practice of the previous years' meetings, three additional meetings of NCRR grantees will be held immediately after the Directors meeting: meetings of the Specific Pathogen Free (SPF) Rhesus Macaque Colony grantees, the Chimpanzee Management Plan grantees and contractors, and the Mutant Mouse Research Resource Center (MMRRC) Principal Investigator (PI) and co-investigators. Likewise, two workshops will be scheduled for the day prior to the Directors meeting: a colony records analysis workshop, and a workshop on the establishment of new genomics informatics sites for species that do not currently have such a resource. Because of the overlap in participants, grouping the 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 synergy of face-to-face discussions among people with common concerns, but who are unlikely to attend the same topical scientific meetings.
