Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
and the Columbia University/University of Puerto Rico's
(UPR) School of Tropical Medicine in San Juan (later to
become the UPR School of Medicine), in a planning effort.
He selected Cayo Santiago, a 15.2-hectare (approximately
38-acre) island one kilometer off Puerto Rico's eastern
coastal town of Humacao that was donated to the university
by a wealthy Puerto Rican sugar cane and banking family.
With the help of a $60 000 grant from a private foun-
dation, Carpenter set off for Indochina and India in 1938.
He fared well in collecting the desired number of
macaques. Survival of the 47-day sea voyage from Calcutta
with the caged animals shipped as deck cargo was a testi-
monial to the enduring qualities of rhesus monkeys as well
as to the care that they received. In late 1938, he released
409 rhesus monkeys, 14 gibbons, and three pig-tailed
macaques on Cayo Santiago. Eventually only the rhesus
monkeys remained.
Maintenance of the island and breeding were not
without problems. Local fruits and vegetables did not
provide an adequate diet and malnutrition was overcome
only by feeding fox chow, the early precursor to monkey
chow. Wells were dug, but the water was brackish. Cisterns
and a system for collecting rainwater had to be constructed.
A number of monkeys were lost through fighting or
being denied access to feed by other animals. Under this
pressure, some monkeys even escaped by swimming to the
mainland. Various diseases also took their toll, but
persistent efforts were successful in eventually eliminating
tuberculosis.
Another problem was the lack of dependable financial
support. In 1947, the UPR, which had assumed full
responsibility for the project, actually offered it free to any
institution that would support it. In 1948, a Puerto Rican
neuroanatomist from the University of Michigan came to
the rescue and succeeded in getting a $5000 grant to
support his research and the colony as well. This was the
first of many federal awards and marked the beginning of
sustained federal support. In 1956, Cayo Santiago was
incorporated into the NIH Institute of Neurological,
Communicative Disorders, and Stroke's (NINCDS) Labo-
ratory of Perinatal Physiology. The work of the laboratory
focused on finding the cause and cure for neonatal asphyxia
using rhesus monkeys as research models.
At the closure of the laboratory in 1970, the Cayo
Santiago colony became a part of the UPR Medical Science
campus's Caribbean Primate Research Center. The colony
on Cayo Santiago has remained a favored site for natural-
istic behavioral and noninvasive biomedical research for
almost 70 years (
Figure 1.2
). It has also provided an
extensive database on rhesus monkey genetics, thousands
of rhesus monkey skeletons in the CRPC's osteological
collection, and genetically well-defined animals that have
provided founder stock for starting new breeding colonies
at the center and elsewhere.
FIGURE 1.2
A male rhesus monkey patrolling his territory on
Puerto Rico's Cayo Santiago Island, Caribbean Primate Research
Center. Cayo Santiago is the longest standing primate breeding and
research resource in the western hemisphere. The monkey is likely a direct
descendant of Indian origin breeding stock that was introduced to the
island by Ray Carpenter in 1938. (Photo courtesy of R.G.
Rawlins@
rgrstockphoto.com
)
Virological Research in Nonhuman
Primates
General
Technically, the modern use of nonhuman primates in
biomedical research had its origins in Pasteur's work with
rabies and the studies of others with smallpox and vaccinia
in the late 1800s.
Kalter and Heberling (1971)
and
Gerone
(1974)
have provided comprehensive reviews of virological
research in nonhuman primates, including work on yellow
fever and a variety of encephalitis viruses through the
1930s.
Polio
The Nobel prizewinning achievement of
Landsteiner and
Popper (1908, 1909)
in isolating poliovirus in Vienna
provided the real beginning of serious and widespread use
of nonhuman primates in biomedical research. The unique
susceptibility of nonhuman primates to this relatively new
and frightening disease threat clearly established their
special importance in research.
The intense efforts to develop a vaccine against polio
that followed were unprecedented. They spanned the next
45 years, were international in scope, and involved a host of
major investigators. However, it was a complex process that
experienced serious setbacks. There were some promising
early findings based on nonhuman primate studies using
