The Tulane National Primate Research Center has received two grants of $4 million each from the National Center for Research Resources of the National Institutes of Health for new construction and expansion of its current breeding facility in Covington, La. The first grant will fund construction of a facility that will house monkeys assigned to a variety of research studies and nursery facilities for infant monkeys.
Replacing existing square footage in the 40-year old facility, the new housing and procedure areas will functionally separate animal areas from laboratory spaces and will be designed to address security, biosafety, and access issues. The second grant will fund creation of a national nonhuman primate breeding colony resource on the Covington campus for animals used in NIH-funded AIDS and biodefense research associated with the Regional Centers of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases. The project will also include the construction of buildings for staging and quarantine of animals as they are received from or shipped to other facilities as well as animal corral housing.
