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The Institute for Antiviral Research (IAR) is located at Utah State University (USU) in Logan, Utah. The IAR has laboratories on the main campus located in three buildings within close proximity of one another, the Veterinary Sciences Building (VSB), the Laboratory animal Research Center (LARC), and the Biotechnology Building (Biotech Center), as well as laboratories at the new USTAR BioInnovations building at the Innovation Campus.
The IAR has four BSL-2 research laboratories in VSB, one BSL-2 research laboratory in the Biotech center, one central cell culture laboratory in VSB, and one BSL-3+ laboratory in VSB in which SARS-CoV and hantavirus studies are done. In the LARC, the IAR occupies one select-agent approved ABSL-3+ suite consisting of one animal room, one ABSL-2 suite of consisting of four animal rooms and one research laboratory, and one ABSL-3 suite consisting of three animal rooms and one research laboratory. In addition, the IAR shares a surgery suite in the LARC, which is used to do electrophysiology and stereotaxic neurological surgery.
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All animal facilities have AAALAC accreditation (March 2013, Unit #649) and USU has received a PHS Welfare Assurance Number (A3801-01, exp. 2/28/2014). In addition, the LARC BSL-3+ select-agent facility has been commissioned by World BioHazTec Corporation has been recently inspected and approved by USDA (July 27, 2011), and received a select-agent registration number (A20110727-1248, exp. July 26, 2014).
The IAR also has ABSL-2, ABSL-3, and ABLS-3+ laboratories in the new Bio-Innovations building. The ABSL-3 space consists of 7,790 sq ft. of laboratory space, of which 4,668 sq. ft. is ABSL-3+ laboratory space. In addition, the IAR is also supported by the new vivarium housed in the same building with approximately 20,000 sq. ft. of additional animal holding space.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Histology and PK studies can be and have been done for the IAR by personnel at the Utah State Diagnostic Laboratory (Logan, Utah). Tissues are routinely processed using Sakura TissueTek VIP 5 processor, then embedded in paraffin using Leica EG1160 embedding station, sectioned (5 micron thick standard sectioning) using Leica RM2145 microtome and stained with hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) using Jung autostainer XL. They have full capacity for special staining and to develop manual immunohistochemical (IHC) procedures using any commercially available antibodies. They can also adapt any manual IHC procedure to high throughput using Nexes Ventana system IHC autostainer system. The histotechnologist is certified through the American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP) and the DVM pathologists are board certified. The lab is near the end of the process of accreditation (certification) with the American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians (AAVLD) and expects accreditation early next year.
Confocal microscopy and flow cytometry will be available in BSL-3 containment within the BioInnovations building.
The USU Biotechnology Center provides services such as mass spectrometry for analyzing the purity of test compounds should their purity be in doubt (i.e., unexpected toxicity), sequencing (i.e., drug resistant viruses), and various DNA, RNA, and protein analyses (i.e., array analyses for virus-cell interactions and mechanism of action studies).
Quansys Biosciences (Logan, Utah) provides and has done cytokine array analyses and data mining for us in the past to evaluate the effects of drugs and/or viruses on serum and lung cytokines. They also provide cytokine array kits for in house cytokine analyses.
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