Since the mid-1950s, Texas Biomed has housed nonhuman primates on its campus and ensured these animals receive the highest quality care. Round-the-clock care is provided every day by veterinarians, veterinary technicians, behavioral management and animal care professionals to include daily feeding, cleaning and health checks, daily enrichment provisions and activities and biannual wellness exams. SNPRC’s animal care program is tailored to meet the physical, social and environmental needs of its nonhuman primate colonies.

Each colony is unique and requires experts in the care and maintenance of the animals. Without this expertise, the animals and the breakthroughs they enable would not be possible.

Baboon Colony

SNPRC’s pedigreed baboon (Papio anubis, Papio hamadryas) colony was established in 1972 with 200 baboons. Today, SNPRC is home to the world’s largest baboon colony, including nearly 1,000 baboons. Because of the complex genetic structure of the colony, animals from this population are uniquely suited for genetic research on normal and disease-associated traits, as the structure of the pedigreed baboon colony has been developed carefully over nine generations.

The baboon is widely used as a model to study the genetics of complex diseases, and continues as a successful model for many chronic and infectious diseases, including insulin resistance, obesity, heart disease, hypertension and osteoporosis. Baboons have also been used to further studies in contraception, tissue engineered heart valves, epilepsy, immune system aging, pertussis, sepsis, neonatal breathing and ischemic stroke.

Common Marmoset

Common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) have been a biomedical research resource since the early 1960’s, used predominately in studies of infectious disease, immunology and neuroscience. However, cellular and molecular resources have recently been developed that greatly enhance the value of marmosets in aging, genetics, infectious disease and mother to infant health research and have increased interest in employing this model.

SNPRC is one of only two national primate research centers that provide marmoset research resources. Resources include the only large population (>70) of aged marmosets (>10 years) in the country and is now considered one of the largest in the world.

As a non-endangered anthropoid primate with small size, the highest fertility and the shortest life span, marmosets also offer a high efficiency nonhuman primate model for biomedical research. In addition, many areas of research take advantage of unique features of its biology for application to human disease such as aging and reproductive health studies.

Rhesus Macaques

SNPRC is home to more than 1,500 Indian-origin rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) and aims to fulfill a critical need by providing Indian-origin rhesus macaques monkeys for national AIDS-related research efforts using state-of-the-art viral testing methods. Other research with the animals includes SARS-CoV-2, Ebola virus, Marburg and tuberculosis.

SNPRC maintains a colony of cynomolgus macaques and a colony of Indian-origin Specific Pathogen-Free (SPF) rhesus monkeys for biomedical research. SNPRC is also able to acquire and provide non-rhesus macaques to programs using other macaque species not bred at SNPRC and to manage the research projects that are conducted with macaques at SNPRC.

More than 900 rhesus macaques have been successfully genotyped at SNPRC. The Center has implemented an economical plan for genetic management and characterization of nonhuman primate breeding colonies using high throughput sequencing methods.

Chimpanzee Retirement Village at SNPRC

SNPRC no longer performs research on chimpanzees outside of simply observational. In August 2016, The NIH announced its plan for retiring all NIH-owned and NIH-supported chimpanzees to Chimp Haven. All NIH-supported chimpanzees at SNPRC that were medically able to be moved have been transferred to Chimp Haven.

SNPRC houses and cares for 18 Chimpanzees who live in exceptional facilities that provide year-round indoor-outdoor access with playgrounds and enrichment. They live in social environments with other chimpanzees and are cared for by a large staff of veterinarians, behavioral scientists and trainers. SNPRC’s chimpanzee care team has worked with these animals for decades and developed strong bonds with each of the animals.

Chimpanzees have been of great benefit to life-saving research. SNPRC’s chimpanzees served as models for infectious disease research and were critical to developing vaccines for Hepatitis A and B and to developing curative therapies for Hepatitis C. Other notable breakthrough research involving chimpanzees include:

  • Development of the Hepatitis B virus vaccine used worldwide.
  • Discovery of the infectious agent Hepatitis C virus
  • Development of HCV therapies that cure infection within 12 weeks with oral medications
  • Historic breakthroughs in HIV research prior to discovery of simian immunodeficiency virus, a virus similar to HIV that can cause a disease like AIDS in monkeys.