A New Space for the Animal Care Center

by Darla Brown

As the executive director of The University of Texas Health Science Center’s Center for Laboratory Animal Medicine and Care, Bradford S. Goodwin, Jr., DVM, has experienced a rollercoaster of emotions over the last three years.

And that’s an understatement.

First there was utter disbelief followed by profound grief when nearly 5,000 animals were drowned in Tropical Storm Allison: “The tragedy was beyond comprehension. It was on the same level as when my father died. You put all of your time and energy into your work and in a flash it is gone. My job is to care for and support the animals and investigators.”

Then there was a sense of determination followed by defeat when plans commenced to rebuild the animal care center on the top floors of the Medical School Building and then were stopped: “We had been working on plans for a year and a half to rebuild on the roof, and then suddenly we were told that the engineers decided it wasn’t feasible. It was a devastating setback. I was crushed when I got that call.”

But now, Dr. Goodwin is at the apex of the ride, full of excitement and energy about the plans for the new animal care center. “I can’t wait for the new building. There is a sense of urgency about it. It will be a state-of-the-art facility – certainly the best such facility in Texas and one of the best in the world---when it is completed,” he says.

Dr. Bradford Goodwin shows off the new rodent cages that will be featured in the animal care facility.

The new animal care center will be located in the top two floors of the new Research Replacement Facility (RRF) which will be on the site of the John Freeman research building, and is slated for construction beginning in January 2005. Two grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Center for Research Resources, each in the amount of $3 million, are crucial to underwrite the costs of the building’s construction.

“Seeing our baby – the new research building – through its gestational date is my most important short-term goal,” says Dean Stanley G. Schultz, M.D. “It will permit a much needed significant expansion of our research capacity.

“One of the grants is contingent upon the building being completed by September 2006. We’ve got to have a lot of trust, faith, and a lot of cooperation from a lot of people, but we should be able to make that deadline.”

The top two floors of the building will replace the 40,000 net square feet of the destroyed basement animal care facility. “We had a centralized facility with 75 animal rooms, but it was designed in the early 1970s for mice, which limited our ability to house large animals,” Dr. Goodwin says.

For the last three years, the animal research enterprise has been diligently carrying on its mission while being dispersed throughout the Texas Medical Center.

“M. D. Anderson Cancer Center had a new vivarium, which has been housing our large animals since the disaster. Without that space, we would have been out of business.

“With the help of Claire Brunson in the administration office, and the cooperation of many Medical School faculty and chairs, we were able to convert 23 labs in the Medical School Building to animal housing rooms. Plus, we maxed out the space in the animal care facilities in the UT Dental Branch, Mental Sciences Institute, and School of Public Health,” Dr. Goodwin explains.

Despite having staff literally running around the Texas Medical Center to get their jobs done, animal research is going strong.

“We actually have more animals today than we did at the time of disaster. Everyone is pitching in to make it work. Our job is to provide healthy, stress-free animals for our researchers,” Dr. Goodwin says.

The new facility is being planned with input by the researchers and will contain all of the animals’ and researchers’ needs on the two floors. A large number of procedure and testing rooms will keep animal transport to a minimum.

“We’ll have ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ elevators and our own loading dock for animals so that we can keep them as healthy as possible,” Dr. Goodwin says. The wall finishes and floors will be heat and stain resistant to ensure adequate sanitation.

One floor will be dedicated to surgery with four operating rooms as before, but a dedicated rodent surgery area will be an enhancement. Surrounding the surgery suite will be the large-animal housing.

The other floor will contain a rodent barrier with a specific pathogen-free environment to prevent the animals from becoming compromised. “We also will have a barrier for raising and breeding transgenic animals,” Dr. Goodwin adds.

Another new feature is an individually ventilated caging rack system, which provides filtered air to each rodent cage. “This keeps the animal as healthy as can be and will be the new standard for cages at the UT Health Science Center,” Dr. Goodwin says. (A recent grant from the Permanent University Fund will allow Dr. Goodwin to outfit the new animal care center with these premier cages.)

Security also will be of the highest standard in the new facility. “Due to the animal rights movement, we are constantly vigilant about security,” Dr. Goodwin says.

The new facility will be accessible only by electronic ID cards and will be monitored by the UT Police Department.

“There also is a high level of biosecurity that we must enforce,” Dr. Goodwin adds. “No children are ever allowed in the facility because they could transmit a disease to our animals, and no one with a cough or a cold sore may enter the center.”

Despite the scattered nature of the animal research program over the last three years, and the emotional highs and lows, the program was reaccredited for three years in 2002 by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory and Animal Care – International.

“We came through with flying colors and are due for a review again in July 2005,” Dr. Goodwin says. “The day we are site reviewed in our new building will be a real achievement.”