IITRI Begins Major Facility Expansion

IITRI has initiated a multi-million dollar facility expansion that will substantially increase our laboratory capacity and enable us to provide a broader range of research and testing services to our customers. Architectural and engineering work on the new facilities has been completed, and construction is in progress. We project that laboratory construction and validation will be completed late in the first quarter of 2005.

New large animal facilities will include:

• 8 canine holding rooms that will house more than 150 dogs in floor-level runs. A procedure room is located adjacent to each canine holding room.
• 4 primate holding rooms and adjacent treatment areas.
• a safety pharmacology laboratory that is designed primarily for studies of cardiac function using telemetry.
• a complete surgical suite and necropsy facilities.

New inhalation toxicology facilities will include:

• 2 canine inhalation laboratories.
• 2 additional rodent inhalation toxicology laboratories. These laboratories increase our total number of rodent inhalation laboratories to 10.

New facilities for general toxicology studies will include:

• 5 new rodent rooms, increasing our total number of standard rodent rooms to 38.
• a new centralized necropsy facility.
• a new cage wash area.

Expanded BSL-2 and BSL-3 facilities will include:

• a BSL-3 laboratory for studies with respirable aerosols.
• 4 additional laboratories that can be used for either in vivo or in vitro studies with pathogenic agents, which bring our total number of BSL-2 and BSL-3 laboratories to 10.

New chemistry, biochemistry, and cell/molecular biology laboratories will include:

• a 4-room chromatography suite.
• seven laboratories for studies in biochemistry, cell biology, and molecular biology.

The facility expansion program also includes a relocation and major expansion of our Quality Assurance archive, construction of new offices, a new storage building and other support space.