UECC ANIMAL FACILITY IMPROVEMENT GRANT

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) is committed to pursue a standard of excellence in animal research. Maintaining accreditation by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC) is one of the means used by UNMC to measure accomplishment of this objective. Comparative Medicine (CM) was reorganized to its present configuration on August 1,2001 to consolidate and centralize the animal care program for all biomedical animal research and teaching on the UNMC campus and 1 off-campus location. CM supports animal care programs encompassing 5 separate animal facilities and 3 dedicated surgical facilities on the Omaha campus and 1 off-campus location, and supports animal research for the faculty of 4 colleges, 1 school, 2 institutes, 9 centers and Graduate Studies. In fiscal year 2001-02, CM provided animal resource services to over 82 principal investigators with over 475 animal protocols. Grant awards for the UNMC Campus totaled $50.8M including $27.8M in NIH funding, a 107% increase over the previous five years. UNMC's goal is to obtain an annual total of $100M in research funding around the year of 2005. UNMC received $10M in federal research grants during the second quarter of fiscal year 2002-2003. Approximately 99.9% percent of the animal use at UNMC occurs on the main campus complex. Approximately 16, 952 sq. ft. of space is currently under renovation in building 4230 to provide a campus-wide remote rodent quarantine and re-derivation facility that will utilize flexible film isolators for animal holding. A new 43, 821 sq. ft. animal facility, at Durham Research Center (DRC) is under construction on the West end of the campus. Our second largest vivarium on the main campus, the Eppley Cancer Center (UECC), was built in 1972. The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research integrated the UECC animal care personnel, equipment, and facilities under CM in 2001. Significant investments in ventilated microisolator caging and hoods have since been made to increase animal housing density in existing space. UECC's two existing autoclaves need to be replaced with larger capacity machines to accommodate the tremendous changes that have occurred in this "state of the art" care available for animals. Additional high-density housing is not possible due to the limitations of the undersized autoclaves. These limitations have also weakened the barrier housing, which undermines our ability to provide enough viral antibody free rodents for research if not corrected in the near future. This facility, therefore, has the highest renovation priority on the UNMC campus. This proposal will provide information relative to this renovation and completion of the project will allow UNMC to provide improved quantity and quality animal housing for research animals at the UECC.