Baboon Research Resource Program

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The OUHSC Baboon Resource Program continues to serves as a national source of baboons for NIH supported biomedical and behavioral research. Over the last four years we have provided 582 baboons to 23 Institutions outside the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. We have also provided 110 baboons over the last four years for the developing OUHSC Baboon Specific Pathogen Free (SPF) baboon program. This SPF colony is unique and is the only known NIH baboon colony that is negative for 13 endogenous viruses including all five known baboon herpes viruses, four retroviruses, plus four other baboon viruses and the most common baboon parasites. We continue to make significant progress toward self-sufficiency as the program income provides almost 50% of the support of the baboon research resource program. Significant progress has been made in our infrastructure with the completion of the new state of the art 6.5 million dollar, 18,000 square foot Baboon SPF building. Our collaboration with the Oklahoma State University Center for Veterinary Health Sciences (OSUHSC) (College of Veterinary Medicine) continues to produce significant research resource related research. This application has a significantly stronger behavioral and genetic program with the addition of a PhD level genetic behaviorist (John Ely, PhD). We are now performing in house viral diagnostics with the addition of a full time PhD level Virologist (James Papin, PhD). Recently we have added a full time Veterinary Immunologist to our Comparative Medicine Faculty (Sunil Joshi, DVM, PhD). These three full time research and diagnostic faculty significantly strengthens our diagnostic and research expertise in behavior, genonomics, virology, and immunology. The OUHSC Baboon Research Resource program continues to attract more veterinary student preceptors. Over the last four years we have had veterinary student preceptors and visiting summer students from seven veterinary schools. We continue to host a summer visit and tour for NIH T 35 students from, Oklahoma State University, University of Missouri, and Kansas State University. The OUHSC Baboon Research Resource continues to serve as a national source for biomedical, and behavior research.