EXTRAMURAL RESEARCH FACILITIES IMPROVEMENT CONSTRUCTION

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal request $4 million NCRR funding to complete 34,018 sq. ft. of animal housing, procedure, and support space. When matched with $6.25 million from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) this award will fit-out two of five floors in the Research Support Building (RSB). The RSB will serve as one of to UAB hubs for animal support, and construction is about to begin. The award will be used to finish and equip 17,009 sq. ft. of animal support space (cage wash, autoclave, receiving, necropsy, storage) on Level 1 and an equal amount of animal housing and procedure space on Level 5. Level 5 is designed at ABSL-2 but has 1, 835 sq. ft. ABSL-3/BSL3 biocontainment suite. The project will provide space for over 8, 000 small mouse cages in ventilated racks. The space will be used primarily to cage the animals of investigators in the UAB Immunology and Autoimmunity Program, a program with over $75 million in active and pending PHS funding. In addition, the project will relieve the campus-wide pressure on animal space caused by the ongoing 14 percent annual increase in the daily mouse census. It also supports four mouse core facilities servicing many of these PHS investigators (gnotobiotics, hybridoma/phage display, mapping of complex traits, and propagation of genetically engineered mice). Lastly, this project works toward our long-term goal of centralizing animal care and procedure space so as to optimize the quality of the animal program at minimal costs to investigators and research sponsors.