A Brief Guide to Applying for Research Access to the LPMG

Available Research Facilities

• CAYO SANTIAGO is an island off the south­eastern coast of Puerto Rico. It is inhabited by a colony of free-ranging, provisioned rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). This field station is avail­able for behavioral and short-term, limited biomedical studies. The animals are captured annually for routine medical evaluation and identification of new­born animals. Matrilineal and other back­ground demographic data is available for CPRC approved research projects.
  
  
• SABANA SECA is a caged facility nine miles west of San Juan. Animals at this facility are housed in two-acre or one-third acre enclo­sures, gang cages or individual cages. Re­search conducted at this facility is primarily observational behavioral studies or biomedi­cal studies requiring additional handling of the animals.
  
  
• LABORATORY FOR PRIMATE MORPHOLOGY AND GENETICS is located in the School of Medi­cine on the Medi­cal Sciences Campus in San Juan and houses 1) a skeletal collection available for anthropologi­cal, pathological or other osteological studies of dry bones, 2) a preserved soft-tissue speci­men collection comprised of specimens ob­tained at necropsy and 3) a small library of literature related to primatology. Projects are generally limited to non-destruc­tive studies, but research proposals involving destructive sampling will be considered.
  
  

Access and Permission to use facilities at CPR

All scientists who plan to conduct research at any of the CPRC facilities, are REQUIRED to submit proposals for their projects, (including pilot stud­ies) a minimum of 60 days in advance of the pro­posed starting date. All proposals are re­viewed by CPRC scientific staff and re­quire approval by the CPRC before any re­search can be conducted. In­terested researchers are strongly urged to contact the scientist-in-charge of each facility prior to submitting a pro­posal in order to discuss the fea­sibility of the study and the involve­ment of the CPRC.

Proposals are evaluated for scientific merit, feasi­bility, and potential overlap or conflict with other ongoing, funded or planned projects at the CPRC. In addition to CPRC staff, occasionally, additional outside investigators-particularly those who have submitted, or initiated projects at the CPRC-are consulted in the evaluation of a pro­posed project.

Draft proposals are acceptable for the review pro­viding they do not differ significantly from the final version. After revisions, the final version of the proposal must be sent to CPRC prior to the initiation of the project.

Projects must be submitted for review well in advance of the start of a project. If funding (in­tramural or extramural) is sought, the proposal must be approved by the CPRC before it is sub­mitted to a funding agency. Most funding agen­cies will not appropriate funds for projects with­out advance approval by the research facility (CPRC). In order to meet this obligation, all pro­jects should be submitted to the CPRC 60 days in advance of the grant deadline.

Requirements for Proposals

The following items are essential for any proposal for review by the CPRC:

• Hypotheses or purpose of project
  
  
• Background and significance
  
  
• Materials and methods
  
  
• Budget (including CPRC fees)
  
  
• Copy of Application forms for the Institu­tional Ani­mal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) of the University of Puerto, Medi­cal Science Cam­pus for all live animal studies (including be­havioral studies.)
  
  

The materials and methods of a proposal should indi­cate the species, sex, ages and number of ani­mals to be studied. It must clearly describe the procedures to be performed, e.g. intramuscular injections, venopuncture; list of measurements to be obtained, etc. It must also include medicaments required for anesthesia, including dosage.

All submitted proposals must contain a budget that includes CPRC fees be­fore receiving final CPRC approval. A CPRC bench (use) fee, a han­dling or per sample fee and/or per diem for all monkeys in the study is charged for all projects.

All researchers whose projects involve the study of live animals must also submit their full propos­als for independent evaluation by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) of the University of Puerto Rico, Medical Sci­ences Campus, and their home institution. The appro­priate forms for the UPR-RCM-IACUC are avail­able from the CPRC. These forms, along with the final proposal, must be submitted by the re­searcher directly to IACUC at the UPR Medical Sciences Campus.