The University of Louisiana at New Iberia Primate Research Story

May 27, 2004

Construction will begin within a month on an expansion of UL’s New Iberia Research Center, opening the door for more research and jobs, the center’s director said.

The center is home to nearly 6,000 primates used in medical research by pharmaceutical companies and the National Institutes of Health, a government consortium of institutes specializing in particular fields of study.

The 50,000-square-foot expansion, which will cost nearly $9 million, is required to keep up with the center’s research demands and federal regulations on cage space, said Thomas Rowell, the center’s director. The lack of cage space has slowed the center’s growth for the last 1 1/2 years and forced the center to turn away research.

Pharmaceutical companies hire the research center to house and maintain animals vital to research during the developmental stages of drug manufacturing. Ten years may be needed to develop a new drug and get it approved for human trials, Rowell said.

With the expansion, Rowell expects that between 50 and 100 new employees will be needed, some in specialized fields such as medical technology and veterinary science.

John Robbins of Beyt, Robbins Inc. of New Iberia is the project architect. The firm specializes in medical facilities. Contractor M.D. Descant Inc. of Bunkie won the contract for the expansion, Robbins said.

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The addition will include two housing and research facilities and 18 “Primadomes,” which house the center’s chimpanzees. The outdoor domes have jungle-gym rafters for the animals to climb and natural floors of grass. An indoor cage-housing facility will be sandwiched between every two “Primadomes.”

The center has about 400 chimps and is one of three centers in the world in compliance with Good Laboratory Practice standards set for the use of chimpanzees as animal models for human diseases. The center is also one of 15 facilities approved by the Centers for Disease Control for importation of nonhuman primates.

About six pharmaceutical companies have steady contracts with the center, Rowell said. Each pharmaceutical company has its own “colony” with its separate set of housing cages and buildings, including a research building.

Some companies send their own researchers to New Iberia to conduct studies. The center also directs research for about a dozen companies, Rowell said.

Rowell would not comment on the pharmaceutical companies that have contracts with the center.

“For the private sector, we maintain a level of confidentiality,” he said. “A lot of the drugs we work with are immuno-suppressive and utilized for transplants.”

He said other drug testing has included research into the use of peroxidase inhibitors in treating AIDS. The center has also provided resources for the hepatitis B vaccine. The center’s animals were also the resource for Carlton Gajdusek’s Nobel Prize-winning research of prion diseases, which includes mad cow disease.

The center even has its resident alligator with its own habitat — a pond on the site complete with its own nesting egrets.

The center’s annual budget is $18 million, and it’s self-supporting. About 80 percent of its budget comes from pharmaceutical companies. The other 20 percent comes from grants from the National Institutes of Health. Those grants from the NIH total about $33.3 million and continue through 2011.

Private companies will pay about $7 million for the expansion. The rest will be covered by an NIH construction grant.

The center also houses and breeds animals for research done by the institutes within the NIH, including the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Center for Research Resources and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Not all of the animals are housed outdoors. Some are housed in cages inside the buildings throughout the 100-acre complex on the old Naval Air Base in New Iberia.
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<i>UL denies animal abuse allegations</i><blockquote><p align=justify>USDA confirms investigation of New Iberia Research Center

The University of Louisiana at New Iberia Research Center is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for possible violations of the Animal Welfare Act, a USDA spokesman confirmed Monday.

Darby Holladay of the USDA would not confirm that the investigation stemmed from allegations made by a former employee, but a lawsuit filed earlier this month by Narriman Fakier alleges she was fired for blowing the whistle on animal cruelty and violations of the Animal Welfare Act.

The lawsuit, filed against the state, Board of Supervisors of the UL System and UL, claims wrongful termination, retaliatory discharge, violation of First Amendment rights and violation of Whistleblower statutes.

Allegations listed in Fakier's lawsuit tell of monkeys who died of cold exposure and animals being abused at the center, which houses about 6,000 primates for medical research by pharmaceutical companies and the National Institutes of Health. The center also has about 400 chimpanzees used for medical research.

The university denies the allegations, said Ray Authement, UL president.

"We've been very diligent in pursuing complaints and having them investigated when reported," Authement said Monday.

Authement said he isn't aware of any other alleged violations against the center.

"We've had some things in terms of sizes of cages to respond to, but I know of no serious violation that was reported or not taken care of," he said. "This is a model center for the United States, and we're very proud of the way it was run."

The USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is investigating the research center, said Holladay, but he could offer few details about the pending investigation.

"There is an open investigation of possible violations of the Animal Welfare Act," Holladay said.

The act prohibits animals being anesthetized in groups, a practice Fakier alleges.

"The AWA stipulates that every licensee has to have at least an annual unannounced inspection," he said.

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The Daily Advertiser has requested inspection reports of the NIRC for the past five years and information regarding any pending investigations against the center.

Calls to the New Iberia Research Center's director, Thomas Rowell, were directed to the director of UL's Public Relations and News Services Office, Julie Simon-Dronet. The UL office sent a release stating that while university officials were unable to comment on specific details in the lawsuit, "they are pleased with what was learned when these allegations were thoroughly investigated by the University's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, the Office for Laboratory Animal Welfare and the United States Department of Agriculture."

The release stated that in 2003, the Association for the Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care evaluated the center and found the program was "in conformance of its AAALAC-International standards and continued its full accreditation."

Fakier, a 20-year veteran in the animal research field, worked at the NIRC from September 2002 until Feb. 19, 2004.

The suit also alleges animal cruelty.

Fakier alleges that employees burned the back of chimpanzees' hands with lighters and also threw "scalding hot water" on another animal. The lawsuit states that Fakier fired the employee responsible, but the center refused to press animal cruelty charges against the employee.

The suit also alleges that monkeys housed outside during the winter months died as a result of exposure and that chimpanzee housing was infested with mice and roaches.

"Repeatedly blocked by NIRC officials as she continued to internally blow the whistle and voice her concerns, (Fakier) felt increasingly intimidated and fearful for her job, her career, the welfare of the chimpanzees and monkeys at NIRC and the safety of employees at the facility," the suit states.

Fakier was asked to resign from the center in February 2004 after voicing her concern about that young chimpanzees who had been in social groups since birth would be placed in separate cages near older, aggressive chimps for a study. The lawsuit states that Fakier believed the action would traumatize the animals.

Five days later she rescinded her resignation, but the next day received a letter that her resignation was already accepted.

She is seeking a jury trial and compensatory damages for lost income and loss of future earnings.
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<! UL seeks permission to build chimp house ><blockquote><p align=justify>Plans to build a national chimpanzee research observatory at the University of Louisiana's farm in Cade is moving closer to reality.

At today's University of Louisiana System meeting, UL officials will ask for approval to build the first phase of the project - Tanzania House - a nearly $500,000 facility for the study of human-raised chimpanzees. The project has been planned for at least five years.

Tanzania House will be the location for the study of human-raised chimps by UL's Cognitive Evolution Group, headed by researcher Daniel Povinelli. Povinelli was unavailable for comment.

Researchers aren't interested in the chimps' rearing environment, but "the nature-nurture aspect" of how the chimps have been raised, said Conni Castille, a research associate and study director for the UL's Center for Child Studies.

Povinelli's research group has followed the cognitive growth and interactions of chimpanzees that have been raised together since their birth on the grounds of the New Iberia Research Center. Povinelli's research group is separate from the NIRC which houses and breeds primates for drug research.

The Tanzania House and future observatory will be located on about 20 acres of UL's farm in Cade.

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Volunteer families will be used for the study and will remain on-site with the chimps.

About two years ago, the research group conducted research on human-reared chimps in a UL-owned house known as the Hawkins House in Lafayette, near the main campus. But after neighbors complained about chimpanzees living in the home, the university pulled the study from the house.

Tanzania House is estimated to cost about $500,000, said Robert Stewart, UL's new vice president of research and graduate studies. An intense effort is under way to raise money privately to pay for the project. Stewart said if the fundraising isn't as successful as planned, the university will likely consider finding a matching source.

Tanzania is the first phase of the plan to build a national chimpanzee observatory in Cade, Stewart said.

"The Tanzania House is the first step in that direction," he said.

Like telescope observatories, the chimpanzee observatory will serve as a resource for visiting researchers who otherwise wouldn't have the access to the animals. It will include a consortium of member-universities.

Washington University in St. Louis has already signed on as a partner for the project.

"The way the project is envisioned, there's nothing else like it that's being planned where other people could come do the research," said Henry Roediger, III, Washington University's dean of academic planning and former head of psychology.

Roediger visited the university about a month ago, along with other interested researchers, for a meeting about the project. Roediger said he was encouraged by the university's community supporters and the "natural resource" of the acreage in Cade.

"We are very enthusiastic about it," Roediger said.
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New Iberia -- The state Board of Ethics is investigating a complaint that a supervisor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette's primate research lab retaliated against an employee who reported alleged violations of federal animal care standards.

The board is "exploring" allegations that Johnny Hardcastle, head of Animal Resources at UL's New Iberia Research Center, may have violated the state ethics code by subjecting former center employee Narriman Fakier "to acts of reprisal," according to a letter sent by the Ethics Board to an attorney representing the university.

An Ethics Board attorney declined to discuss details of the case, but Fakier filed a lawsuit against the university in February alleging that she was forced to resign in early 2004 after complaining of mistreatment of animals at the center.

Steven Dupuis, who is representing ULL and Hardcastle in the matter, said the ethics complaint is "going to be hotly contested."

The letter states that the board has already conducted a preliminary investigation of the complaint in September and has ordered a public hearing. A public employee found to have violated the Code of Governmental Ethics can face a fine, suspension, demotion or termination. No hearing date has been set.

Primates at the New Iberia Research Center are used in pharmaceutical and medical testing.

Fakier, who worked for two years as a coordinator and animal facility manager at the center, said in the lawsuit that her repeated complaints of alleged violations of animal care guidelines were not acted upon.

Fakier alleged that center Director Thomas Rowell told her that her "concerns would not be addressed by NIRC, and, if she had a problem with that, she should quit."

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Acadiana bureau

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Among some of Fakier's specific allegations: the center violated guidelines for anesthetizing animals, roaches and mice infested primate housing, an employee burned the paws of some chimpanzees with a lighter, another chimpanzee was doused with scalding water and some animals died after being left in outdoor cages during the winters of 2002 and 2003. ULL has commented little on the allegations but has said that Fakier's claims were investigated and that the university was "pleased with what was learned."

University attorneys have said that Fakier was not forced to resign but would probably have been fired for "failure to exercise good judgment" when she allegedly e-mailed complaints about the facility to several recipients with the wording, "I've stirred the pot …"

The research center is also under investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which has oversight of animal research facilities.

USDA spokesman Jim Rogers confirmed Tuesday that the investigation remains open but said confidentiality laws prohibit him from revealing what the investigation is about.

Both the USDA and ULL have declined to provide records of annual federal inspections of the facility or any documents related to the investigation.

USDA has responded that releasing the records could interfere with "enforcement proceedings."

The university responded that the records are exempt from public disclosure laws because of the pending litigation.




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&nbsp; Daniel Povinelli, director of the Cognitive Evolution Group, is thrilled about the project his team is working on right now: The National Chimpanzee Observatory.

When finished, it will be the first large-scale center dedicated to researching chimpanzee behavior with five groups of about 15 primates. Although funding is still being sought, the planned facility would not only be a center for research, but also an educational tool that would allow the public to see the chimpanzees in a natural environment.

Povinelli has been doing research with chimpanzees for more than 15 years. In 1991, he created the CEG. It is affiliated with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and is located next to the New Iberia Research Center near Acadiana Airport. CEG is working with 10 to 15 chimpanzees trying to find out their self and social awareness. Another field of research is their stages of development. By comparing these stages to human development, the experiments help researchers understand child development and disorders like autism.

The basic question Povinelli tries to answer is: What makes us human?

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the daily Iberian

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“You can study human history for thousands of years but to really understand humans, you have to study our closest relatives, the chimpanzees,” he said.

Traditionally, experiments are done with tools, pictures or mirrors. With technology advancing, experiments are now also conducted with touchscreen computers. The chimpanzees get treats like M&M’s or Vanilla Wafers for clicking on certain pictures or putting them in the right order. CEG is still trying to improve experiments involving touchscreens.

“Using touchscreens with primates is a field of science that’s just opening up,” said James Reaux, operations director.

The facility also has a video control room. All the experiments are recorded and filed. The National Chimpanzee Observatory will also provide experiment spaces and recording equipment but have more natural living quarters for the chimpanzees.

Currently, they are kept in cages with concrete floors. At the new facility, which will be built close to the ULL experimental farm in Cade, they will stay on 5,500-square-foot islands with trees and grass.

“A testing environment more similar to a natural environment will mean less errors in our experiments and healthier animals,” said Reaux.

The new chimpanzee observatory also will be accessible to the public. School groups and individuals will be able to watch the chimpanzees from a second floor balcony, while experiments can be done on the first floor.

“Our mission will be to educate the public at large,” Povinelli said. “They will have a chance to get a close-up look of the chimpanzees and witness the experiments. It will be an experience of a lifetime.”

By attracting visitors and researchers to the new facility, Povinelli predicts, “it will have a tremendous educational and economical impact on Acadiana.”

But at first, the $20 million project has to be financed. For the first construction phase, about $7 million is needed. About $5 million could be provided by the state, but private contributions are needed to release the state funds.

With the support of universities across the nation, Povinelli is confident he can raise the necessary funds to start constructing “the only facility where researchers from all over the U.S. can do long-term studies with chimpanzees.”


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&nbsp; A group of Lafayette residents hopes to attract to South Louisiana a national ape observatory and behavioral science research facility that will help sustain the chimpanzee population, draw world-class scientists and boost tourism.

The National Great Ape Preservation Foundation, chaired by Gerald Breaux, executive director of the Lafayette Convention and Visitors Center, was formed as a nonprofit corporation Feb. 27.

The foundation envisions construction of a National Chimpanzee Observatory and Great Ape Zoological Gardens in South Louisiana, where up to 300 world-class scientists could use the apes for behavioral studies related to human problems such as autism and Alzheimer's. The research is not expected to involve invasive, medical or pharmaceutical research.

The facility would provide a home for up to 250 great apes -which could include chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas - in a 200-acre natural habitat with observation towers for tourists and educational opportunities for students.

UL professor Daniel Povinelli, a Louisiana native and Yale University graduate, is a top researcher on chimpanzees and human cognitive development. He is director of the National Chimpanzee Observatory National Project, a group of scientists hoping that the first of three such facilities nationwide will be built in Louisiana.

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Louisiana, south of Interstate 10, is ideal because the weather is warm enough that the chimpanzees could remain outdoors in their natural environment year-round and because of the availability of water, a vital component of the apes' natural environment. Instead of fences and cages, large water-filled moats would be constructed to contain the animals, which do not swim, Breaux said.

"It's ours to lose - Louisiana, not just Lafayette," Breaux said. "It's going to be built on I-10 somewhere in the United States. There's nothing like it anywhere in the United States."

Breaux, through LCVC, put in a request for $10 million in state capital outlay funds to start the project's design and begin land acquisition.

State Sen. Mike Michot, R-Lafayette, said he supports the project and will help advance it toward funding, but state administrators are facing a backlog of capital outlay projects that need funding. It could take two to four years for a new project like this to receive any funds, he said.

The hope is that the non-profit foundation could leverage state money as a match for federal grants or secure private research funds, Michot said. The project as envisioned could cost more than $100 million, Breaux said.

The foundation, along with City-Parish President Joey Durel and his wife, Lynne, and Breaux are hosting a private media event Thursday to introduce the project. Emmy Award-winning actor Alan Alda is an invited guest for the event.

The state Legislature allotted $50 million in state surplus money to the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge during the recent special session, so using state money for the proposed chimpanzee facility is not out of the question, Durel said.

"They're saying you could have 300 of the brightest minds in the world working at this facility. What a brain trust that would bring to our area," he said.

While Povinelli is a professor and researcher at UL, and a few years ago there was discussion about building a national chimpanzee research observatory at the UL farm in Cade, the university is not involved in this project, UL President Ray Authement said.

"That effort has more or less been abandoned. This will not be built on university property ... and the university will play no role," he said.

Association with the university brings regulations that could hinder the facility, Authement said.





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&nbsp; Researchers have carried out the largest study of differences between human and chimpanzee genomes, identifying regions that have been duplicated or lost during evolution of the two lineages. The study, published in Genome Research, is the first to compare many human and chimpanzee genomes in the same fashion.

The team show that particular types of genes - such as those involved in the inflammatory response and in control of cell proliferation - are more commonly involved in gain or loss. They also provide new evidence for a gene that has been associated with susceptibility to infection by HIV.

"This is the first study of this scale, comparing directly the genomes of many humans and chimpanzees," says Dr Richard Redon, from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, a leading author of the study. "By looking at only one 'reference' sequence for human or chimpanzee, as has been done previously, it is not possible to tell which differences occur only among individual chimpanzees or humans and which are differences between the two species.

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"This is our first view of those two important legacies of evolution."

Rather than examining single-letter differences in the genomes (so-called SNPs), the researchers looked at copy number variation (CNV) - the gain or loss of regions of DNA. CNVs can affect many genes at once and their significance has only been fully appreciated within the last two years. The team looked at genomes of 30 chimpanzees and 30 humans: a direct comparison of this scale or type has not been carried out before.

The comparison uncovered CNVs that are present in both species as well as copy number differences (CNDs) between the two species. CNDs are likely to include genes that have influenced evolution of each species since humans and chimpanzees diverged some six million years ago.

"Broadly, the two genomes have similar patterns and levels of CNVs - around 70-80 in each individual - of which nearly half occur in the same regions of the two species' genomes," continues Dr Redon. "But beyond that similarity we were able to find intriguing evidence for key sets of genes that differ between us and our nearest relative."

One of the genes affected by CNVs is CCL3L1, for which lower copy numbers in humans have been associated with increased susceptibility to HIV infection. Remarkably, the study of 60 human and chimpanzee genomes found no evidence for fixed CNDs between human and chimp and no within-chimp CNV. Rather, they found that a nearby gene called TBC1D3 was reduced in number in chimpanzee compared to human: typically, there were eight copies in human, but apparently only one in all chimpanzees.

The authors suggest that it might be evolutionary selection of CNDs in TBC1D3 that have driven the population differences. Consistent with this novel observation, TBC1D3 is involved in cell proliferation (favoured category) and is on a core region for duplication - a focal point for large regions of duplication in human genome.

"It is evident that there has been striking turnover in gene content between humans and chimpanzees, and some of these changes may have resulted from exceptional selection pressures," explains Dr George Perry from Arizona State University and Brigham and Women's Hospital, another leading author of the study. "For example, a surprisingly high number of genes involved in the inflammatory response - APOL1, APOL4, CARD18, IL1F7, IL1F8 - are completely deleted from chimp genome. In humans, APOL1 is involved in resistance to the parasite that causes sleeping sickness, while IL1F7 and CARD18 play a role in regulating inflammation: therefore, there must be different regulations of these processes in chimpanzees.

"We already know that inactivation of an immune system gene from the human genome is being positively selected: now we have an example of similar consequences in the chimpanzee."

CNVs in humans and chimpanzees often occur in equivalent genomic locations: most lie in regions of the genomes, called segmental duplications, that are particularly 'fragile'. However, one in four of the 355 CNDs that the team found do not overlap with CNVs within either species - suggesting that they are variants that are 'fixed' in each species and might mark significant differences between human and chimpanzee genomes.

DNA Samples and analysis

The project used DNA samples from 30 chimpanzees (29 from W Africa, one from E Africa): the chimpanzee reference was produced using DNA from Clint, the chimpanzee whose DNA was used for the genome sequence.

Human DNA samples were obtained from following participants: ten Yoruba (Ibadan, Nigeria), ten Biaka rainforest hunter-gatherers (Central African Republic) and ten Mbuti rainforest hunter-gatherers (Democratic Republic of Congo). The human reference is a European-American male from the HapMap Project (NA10852).

CNVs and CNDs were detected using a whole-genome tilepath of DNA clones spanning the human genome used previously to map human CNVs: this platform can reveal structural variants greater than around 10,000 base-pairs in size.

This work was funded by the Wellcome Trust, the LSB Leakey Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the National Institutes of Health, The University of Louisiana at Lafayette-New Iberia Research Center and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

The authors thank the Human Genome Diversity Project, the Coriell Institute for Medical Research, the Integrated Primate Biomaterials and Information Resource, New Iberia Research Center, and the Primate Foundation of Arizona for samples.


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ABC's Nightline has picked up the NIRC story. Someone (allegedly) smuggled a camera in, and took some disturbing footage.

One caveat: there's no proof (yet) that the videos are indeed of the NIRC. When highly offensive video came out years ago about hunting seal pups, it was strongly believed at the time that the animal activists actually paid the hunters to produce horrific videos.

Let's all keep an open mind, see what comes out of this.

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Originally Posted by CajunFun

_ ABC's Nightline has picked up the NIRC story.

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Please pardon my ignorance, but what is the NIRC and what is the "story"?

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Originally Posted by drumroll

Please pardon my ignorance, but what is the NIRC and what is the "story"?

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Ditteaux!
igeaux.mobi

Yeah I think NIRC is New Iberia Research Center (?) a UL affiliated research facility where of course they do research on monkey's. I haven't heard anything about any videos or anything. Please enlighten.

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Originally Posted by ULtimateCajun

_ Yeah I think NIRC is New Iberia Research Center (?) a UL affiliated research facility where of course they do research on monkey's. I haven't heard anything about any videos or anything. Please enlighten. _

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The link is up on ultoday...