The biomedical use of laboratory animals for both teaching and research will continue to be an important component of Vanderbilt University's commitment to develop better health care and to the education of physicians and other health care professionals. The provision of healthy animals to facilitate these goals has been recognized to be a combination of proper physical facilities and effective husbandry techniques. This proposal requests improvements to the physical facilities which house laboratory animals, in an effort to provide facilities which are consistent with current accepted standards. The proposal is the end result of an internal study which looked to the future direction of biomedical research and education at the University. Several immediate concerns and intermediate needs have been addressed only after they satisfied the test of their long term need. The University is confident that most of the basic animal resource is administered and operates to the benefit of the users and animals and conforms to guidelines and laws which are applicable. However, several areas of improvement should be made to maintain these standards. The Peabody College animal facility requires renovation of floors and ceilings which at present do not facilitate sanitation and are not in compliance with the "Guide". Five years ago program changes eliminated a large non-human primate colony and replaced it with rodent colonies. Large rooms which were necessary for monkeys are not efficient for the rodent colonies now housed in the facility. Air supply to the facility also does not meet the requirements of the "Guide". The renovation of this facility will partition several large rooms into smaller rooms. Existing air supply can then be rerouted to provide acceptable levels of air exchange to a smaller volume of space that is still sufficient to meet the program needs. Alteration of one room in the Stevenson Center Facility and provision of a cage and rack washer in that alteration will improve the sanitation practices now in effect and eliminate the public health concern of moving dirty primate cages to another building. The replacement of the exhaust air fan with a larger unit will balance the air supply fan which was replaced one year ago and provide an air exchange which is within the recommendations of the "Guide". Replacement caging is needed for small non-human primates now being housed in cages which do not meet requirements for cage height. Tree shrew caging also needs to be replaced with stainless steel caging of a more serviceable design.
NIH ExPorter
NIH ExPorter