Campus and community leaders returned last week from a fact-finding trip to Winnipeg, Canada, equipped with firsthand information about one of the world’s newest and nearest biocontainment laboratories for infectious diseases.

UC Davis will submit a proposal by Feb. 10 on behalf of UC to the National Institutes of Health for federal funds to build a similar $200 million national biocontainment laboratory on the Davis campus.

The 10-member Davis group traveled to Winnipeg to observe how the Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health operates and to ask questions related to security, safety and community acceptance. The group, led by Provost Virginia Hinshaw, spent four days in Winnipeg touring the Canadian facility and conferring with emergency services professionals, community members, medical and public health officials, and representatives of the University of Manitoba and the local news media.

Group members included Davis Mayor Susie Boyd and Yolo County Health Director Bette Hinton. UC Davis participants included Steve Tharratt, a professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine; Fire Chief Mike Chandler; Police Capt. Rita Spaur; and Environmental Health and Safety Director Carl Foreman.

"I was extremely impressed, certainly with the laboratory – the facility and the people – and their cohesive approach to both safety and security and to great science and advancements for public health," said Provost Hinshaw of the Canadian Science Centre.

"I was also impressed with the community relationships they have built, which I think are critical to this," she said of the centre, which many Winnipeg residents refer to simply as "the virology lab."

Construction of the three-story, 300,000-square-foot, white-stone and glass Winnipeg facility began in 1992. Research and diagnostic programs began there in the spring of 1998. The center, jointly operated by Canada’s agricultural and health ministries, is located just blocks from downtown Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba’s health sciences campus. It is in an older part of the city of 660,000 people, surrounded by a mixture of residential, commercial and industrial neighborhoods.

The center is the first such laboratory in the world to have research and diagnostic programs for both human and animal diseases. The heart of the facility is what is known as a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory, where researchers clothed in protective "moon suits" can safely work with the most serious viral and bacterial diseases. The centre is equipped with a state-of-the-art ventilation system that processes air through multiple filters before it is released and a waste-treatment plant that "cooks" liquid waste from the containment laboratory at extreme temperatures before it is mixed with common liquid waste from the facility and added to the city sewer system.

The center also has sophisticated security protocols. All employees have level-two federal security clearances and must pass through several security checks before entering the research and diagnostic labs.

"There is so much redundancy, with reference to safety, built into this particular facility, that it’s not foolproof, but almost," said Fire Chief Chandler. He and Police Capt. Spaur connected with their counterparts in the Winnipeg fire and police departments, consulting on emergency services issues.

Although the Winnipeg facility is more than 1,400 air miles from Davis, it is the nearest Biosafety Level 4 facility. The United States currently has two comparable facilities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Ga., and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Md. Smaller Biosafety Level 4 labs are located in San Antonio, Texas; Bethesda, Md.; and at Georgia State University in Atlanta. New Biosafety Level 4 labs are being developed in Galveston, Texas, and Hamilton, Mont.

Currently, however, if there is a suspected case of the most serious infectious diseases in California, biological samples must be flown to one of the East Coast labs for diagnosis. Concerned about that delay during an emergency and the state’s vulnerability to the introduction of infectious diseases through trade and travel, the California Department of Health Services opened discussions with UC Davis officials several years ago about the possibility of locating a biocontainment laboratory on the Davis campus.

Following September 11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks, federal funding was made available to address potential national bioterrorism risks through construction of new biocontainment labs.

Locating a national biocontainment laboratory at UC Davis would facilitate research collaborations between scientists in the medical and veterinary medical schools, veterinary diagnostic laboratory, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Division of Biological Sciences and the California National Primate Research Center. The campus’s proximity to numerous state agencies in Sacramento is also seen as an asset.

Campus leaders are currently examining two locations for the proposed laboratory facility, one near the primate center west of the main campus and the other near the veterinary medicine and medical school buildings.

The campus must submit its application for funding to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases by Feb. 10. Grants for one or two such national laboratories are expected to be awarded in September. The University of California must provide one-fourth of the total construction costs — roughly $50 million — in matching funds.

UC proposes to fund up to $25 million of the match through funds from additional research that will be generated in the facility by scientists from UC Davis and other UC campuses. In recognition of the contribution the facility will make to statewide public health efforts, the university is exploring with the state various means, including the sale of lease-revenue bonds, by which the state could provide the remaining $25 million.

If the university is awarded the construction grant for the laboratory, it can then apply for federal funds to cover operating expenses of the facility.