Monkey trouble

A report to be issued today (July 28) details an ongoing critical shortage of rhesus monkeys, biomedical scientists' major model for studying diseases and fundamental aspects of human biology. The 262-page volume, International Perspectives: The Future of Nonhuman Primate Resources, contains the proceedings of a workshop held last year under the auspices of the US National Research Council."The issue that gets emphasized the most is that rhesus macaques are needed for AIDS research. They're turning out to be the best model. There are not enough to go around," said Joanne Zurlo, director of the Institute for Laboratory Animal Research in Washington, D.C., and a staff member for the April 2002 workshop on which the report is based."Conservatively, that area of research has drawn off between 20 and 50% of the rhesus monkeys that have been maintained at primate centers," said Joseph Kemnitz, director of the National Primate Research Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. US primate research centers, which operate under the aegis of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), have been under a "mandate" since the 1980s to develop programs to deal with AIDS, said Kemnitz, who did not attend the workshop.Heightened concern about anthrax has also strained the supply of rhesus monkeys, Jerry Robinson, director of the national primate research centers program at NIH, told the workshop. Bioterrorism research in general is going to impose increasing demands on nonhuman primate resources, added William Morton, director of the Washington National Primate Research Center. "It's quickly probably going to become in a financial sense as large as AIDS-related research," Morton told The Scientist. "The concern is there are not the breeding colonies to support the demand and there is not the space to put these animals in." But biodefense research can be done on other monkey species, such as the cynomolgus, green monkeys, pigtails, and others, Morton said.Pharmaceutical companies are yet another source of pressure on the primate supply, having raised many breeding colonies for their own use, thus removing them from public sector research, said Kemnitz. The rhesus, specifically the Indian-origin rhesus, has been the favored nonhuman primate in biomedical research for about 50 years—since the polio pandemic—John P. Hearn, a world-renowned primate researcher and vice chancellor of the Australian National University, told the workshop. "Information on the biology of the species is the broadest of any primate other than the human," he said. But in the late 1970s, India, a major supplier, banned export of the animals as a conservation measure.Still, because of their popularity and because of the amount of information about them, researchers have grown accustomed to using Indian rhesus monkeys, even though there are rhesus monkeys available from China, for example, said Morton. With the law of supply and demand working smoothly, prices for rhesus monkeys have shot up. "Where… a few years ago you might have paid $2000 for a rhesus monkey, now the price can be anywhere from 5000 to $12,000."One effort aimed at dealing with the supply problem with rhesus monkeys, Robinson said, is to make researchers aware that there are other sources that can meet their needs.Whether those other varieties are an adequate substitute is questionable, said Morton. "There are people in the AIDS research field that have tried to demonstrate there is little difference between the Chinese-origin rhesus and the Indian-origin rhesus. There are others who maintain there is," he said. Morton cited neuroscientists who have also told him that Chinese rhesus monkeys are significantly different. "They have more difficulty training and modulating these animals, as opposed to the Indian-origin rhesus."

Monkey trouble

New report details rhesus macaque shortage, made worse by added biodefense demand

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