On Aug. 4, 2016, the Southwest National Primate Research Center (SNPRC) at Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Texas Biomed) was awarded more than $40 million for a National Institutes of Health P51 grant through 2021 to continue research programs using nonhuman primates (NHP) as part of the National Primate Research Center (NPRC) consortia.

This five-year grant from the NIH’s Office of Research Infrastructure Programs was the fourth renewal of the Center grant that provides funds to SNPRC to continue operation of its facility with nearly 3,000 nonhuman primates and continue its research in aging, regenerative medicine, experimental physiology and genomics and infectious diseases.

The NIH grant enabled the SNPRC to continue maintaining healthy and highly characterized breeding and research colonies of NHP species, making them available to the global scientific community looking to answer critical questions in disease research.

Research programs at SNPRC focus on marmosets, rhesus macaques, and baboons. The SNPRC team, which includes scientists, veterinarians, animal behaviorists, laboratory animal welfare staff and animal caretakers among many others, also continued to improve infrastructure for NHPs at Texas Biomed.

SNPRC was established in 1999 as part of the NPRC consortia but has been working with nonhuman primates in research since the late 1950s.