National Institute on Aging (NIA) Colony

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PRIMATE SERVICES: NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON AGING COLONY ABSTRACT The primary goal of Primate Services is to ensure the highest quality animal care and husbandry for the California National Primate Research Center (CNPRC) nonhuman primate colonies. The CNPRC has targeted two populations of rhesus macaques to support the aged rhesus macaque resource. The first group is a colony of “recruitment” animals that have reached 15 years of age with minimal or no experimental use and are surgery naïve. At 19 years of age these recruitment animals enter the aged rhesus colony which consists of all rhesus 19 years or older. NIA support for aged monkeys at CNPRC is currently approximately $107,000 direct costs/year, which supports the per diem for approximately 28 monkeys over 19 years of age that are committed to aging research. While this NIA investment has been very helpful to both local and national research teams interested in aging, it only covers a small portion of the funds required to support our target colony which requires approximately $640,000. Thus, a viable program in aging that has national reach requires a dramatic expansion of this resource. We have been attempting to maintain 100 rhesus monkeys over 19 years of age for research as well as 100 “recruitment” monkeys (15-18 years). However, there are no designated funds in the P51 base grant beyond the $107,000 from NIA. This results in extreme financial pressure on our P51 grant, particularly with the declining or flat P51 budgets over the past 5-7 years. Thus, we are requesting funds in this revised P51 proposal to support the full complement of 90 geriatric monkeys and 100 monkeys in the aging pipeline. This colony will not only provide protection for the entire group of 190 monkeys (versus the current support for 28 aged monkeys), but will also allow for ongoing longitudinal studies across an extended age group that will be essential to reveal a panel of biomarkers predictive of vulnerability (i.e., a monkey Framingham Study). Our expectation is that these additional funds will be provided directly by NIA as an expansion of their current support, and not from the Office of the Director. The following Specific Aims are proposed: (1) Support and maintain National Institute on Aging rhesus monkeys in two groups (middle aged, aged) for investigators nationwide that are conducting aging-related research, (2) Establish and maintain a longitudinal database on both populations that are collected at bi-annual physicals and at certain milestones in the animals’ life history, and (3) Provide high quality expertise and services to investigators at the local, regional, and national levels.