UW To Transfer Its Field Station For Primate Research To Tacoma

MEDICAL LAKE, Spokane County - The University of Washington will close its Regional Primate Research Field Station here and open a new facility at American Lake near Tacoma within three years, officials said last week.

In the meantime, the center plans to move as many as 800 of its breeding colony of macaque monkeys to Tulane University's Regional Primate Research Center at Covington, La., by next fall.

The Medical Lake field station has about 1,000 macaques - the largest such colony in the world. The new site will accommodate about 200 macaques and the station's 140-member baboon colony. Additional animals can be transferred from Tulane as needed, or from the UW center's breeding colony in Indonesia.

Since it opened as a field station of the UW's Regional Primate Research Center in 1968, the Medical Lake facility has produced numerous medical and scientific breakthroughs, most recently in AIDS research.

The move to Defense Department land at Fort Lewis will save money and allow for expanded research opportunities and spacious new quarters for the monkeys, said acting director Dr. William Morton.

The 1,000 macaques and 140 baboons now live in concrete cells at a former state prison for the criminally insane on the campus of Eastern State Hospital.

Plans call for the new field station to open in late 1997 or early 1998, Morton said.

The collaborative agreement with Tulane offers a number of advantages, Morton said.

The nation's seven federal primate centers, which include those at the UW and Tulane, are moving toward consolidating primate breeding colonies at warmer southern sites. It is much less expensive to raise animals outdoors, he said.

"The animals will live in spacious outdoor corrals in a warm southern climate, a much more natural setting" than the cells here, Morton said.

A factor in the decision was a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection that raised concerns about the macaques' treatment, he said. The center agreed to improve veterinary care at the Medical Lake center based on the USDA complaints.

There are currently 58 employees at the Primate Field Station. About 40 could lose their jobs after the 800 macaques are moved to Louisiana, Morton said.

The field station's most recent testing showed that a new drug, PMPA, arrested the development of SIV, an AIDS-like virus, in macaques. The research by Dr. Che-Chung Tsai was reported this month in the journal Science.