Novel Macaque Breeding Runs at the New Iberia Research Center

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The New Iberia Research Center (NIRC) at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette is aiming to expand its macaque breeding capacity by the construction of 2 multi-run housing buildings complete with roofing, electricity, water, heating and air circulation. This type of building has been specifically designed and extensively tested for macaque housing/breeding at another facility in Texas, attesting to the adequacy, ease of maintenance and duration of construction. Each building unit will comprise 20 indoor/outdoor runs able to easily accommodate up to 20 breeder animals each for a total capacity of ~800 breeders and their offsprings. This expansion is critical to accommodate the rapidly increasing research programs at NIRC as well as the support of NIAID VRC and SVEU HIV/AIDS focused programs. NIRC supports many both onsite and collaborative programs on lentiviral pathogenesis supported by state of the art imaging capabilities including a whole body to signal cell analysis approach, therapeutic approaches aimed at curing HIV, and an extensive program to prevent mucosal viral acquisition via protective experimental vaccines, vaginal and colorectal microbicides. In addition, NIRC has been a key contributor to the testing of COVID-19 vaccines and antibody treatments. The latter pandemic has severely depleted the supply of research macaques and NIRC has been expanding its colonies via the addition of 2200 nonhuman primates over the past 5 years. This has been accommodate by gradually repurposing chimpanzee housing into breeding and research space, but this conversion has reached its limits and NIRC has reached it maximum capacity as far as monkey housing, in part due to the addition of a 2 new colonies of Mauritian cynomolgus macaques and African green monkeys and the award of a NIAID SIV Vaccine Evaluation Unit award. The rationale for adding this particular type of housing is based on its versatility, low maintenance and cost savings on manpower: Located in Southern Louisiana, NIRC has the ability to house rhesus macaques outdoors year-round for breeding purposes, though the traditional corncrib cage design, while outstanding for sanitation and the behavioral development of macaques, with limited hierarchical stress, also has a number of drawbacks that the proposed new buildings will avoid, including the lack secondary containment, adequate protection for the occasional subzero days as recently experienced and a “rain tax” imposed by our municipal water ordinance. Corncrib housing currently supports breeding groups of up to 10 rhesus macaques in typical harem configuration with 1 male per corncrib. Use of larger runs as proposed, will enable the expansion of >1500 macaque breeders on site, maximizing utilization of proven breeder males. With over 8,500 nonhuman primates on site, NIRC is the largest primate facility in the US, and while not directly supported by NIH, has a rapidly expanding research program and readily available space for expansion, we submit that NIRC is an ideal site for expansion of macaque breeding in support of NIH research.