UTHSC Regional Biocontainment Laboratory: Upgrade of Facility and Building System

Project Summary The University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center (UTHSC) proposes to upgrade facilities and broaden research services in the existing UTHSC Regional Biocontainment Laboratory (RBL) located in Memphis, TN to support internal and external investigators in basic and translational research with emerging pathogens and select agents utilizing small animal.

In Aim 1, upgrading the hardware and building automation system software that has been in place since 2009 is our top priority with this funding opportunity and will allow the UTHSC RBL to operate continuously well into the future.

In Aim 2, we request support to expand existing infrastructure in order to use our current facility to its design capacity with additional caging and racks.

Importantly, a major component of our plan is to upgrade our vivarium to house the Provantis Instem to provide support for preclinical services.

In Aim 3 and 4, we request equipment for whole animal imaging and immunological analyses to strengthen our ability to meet the research service demands in terms of endpoints available to users; both internally and externally.

In summary, this proposal seeks to: (1) upgrade and replace outdated or obsolete components of the building management system; (2) expand infrastructure for small animals other than mice, (3) upgrade current animal imaging capabilities and dedicate one animal biosafety level 3 (ABSL3) laboratory for the IVIS/CT imaging system, (4) enable preclinical services with a dedicate ABSL-3 area for Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) monitoring; and (5) equipment to enable immunological analyses currently not available (elispot) and replace an obsolete flow cytometry equipment with a spectral flow cytometer.