Industry News

The United States Department of Homeland Security's Office of Procurement Operations will award approximately $24 million over several years to the Plum Island Animal Disease Center in Orient Point, N.Y. The project will improve research productivity and safety at the BSL-3 facility, which accommodates research on harmful zoological disease agents.

Aurora, Colo.-based Merrick & Company received an engineering excellence award in December of 2007 from the American Council of Engineering Companies of Colorado. Merrick was recognized with a Building/Technology Systems Award for work on the BSL-3Ag Large Animal Health Facility project in Ames, Iowa. Merrick provided detailed architectural and engineering design services for one of the initial elements of the $460 million modernization of the USDA National Centers for Animal Health.

Ohio University is planning to construct a $450,000 animal research facility south of its Athens campus in Hebbardsville. The facility will accommodate large animals including cattle and goats for anatomy and physiology studies. Designed to promote faculty recruitment, the facility will enable research on locomotion, feeding, and craniofacial morphology.

Colorado State University broke ground in December of 2007 on a $42 million veterinary science facility in Fort Collins. The 90,000-sf diagnostic medicine center will house specialty laboratories for zoonotic disease research. The facility is one of seven in the nation selected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to test for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.

BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics, a developer of adult stem cell technologies, began constructing an animal research facility at its headquarters in Petach-Tikvah, Israel in late 2007. Housing laboratories for preclinical therapeutics research, the vivarium and cleanroom facility will be built to meet National Institutes of Health and National Research Council guidelines.