A biocontainment facility that allows research on infectious diseases is nearing completion.

The Animal Health Research Center (AHRC, pronounced “ark”) in the College of Veterinary Medicine contains laboratories for work with infectious agents that can easily be transmitted by air, termed “Biosafety Level 3,” or BSL3.

What sets AHRC apart from other research buildings is the animal holding facility, which will allow the study of infectious diseases in the animals themselves, said Harry W. Dickerson, professor and associate dean of research and graduate affairs at the College of Veterinary Medicine.

The space can hold animal species from rodents to cattle or horses, he said.

While the animal holding facility on the first floor will be completed at the end of the summer, Dickerson said the BSL2 and BSL3 labs on the second floor are ready for researchers to move in next week.

The second floor will house the new Center for Disease Intervention, a multi-disciplinary platform to assist viral emerging infectious disease research, wrote Ralph Tripp, professor and Georgia Research Alliance chair at the College of Veterinary Medicine, in an e-mail.

Tripp, who will head the CDI, wrote that AHRC will allow his lab to develop therapeutic drugs and vaccines for emerging infectious diseases in humans are due to zoonotic pathogens, or pathogens that can spread from animals to humans, he wrote.

“There is an acute need for comprehensive approaches to identify, prevent and control zoonotic diseases, emerging infectious diseases and select agents,” Tripp wrote. “The AHRC provides the facilities and associated personnel to do this.”

AHRC was first scheduled to open in 1998 after two years of construction.

But specific features for air flow, water and waste treatment in the laboratories resulted in construction problems.

“(Some features) didn’t work the way it was expected to work,” Dickerson said.

While finger-pointing was being resolved between the design and building teams in state courts, regulations for some of the laboratories changed, Dickerson said.

“The facility needed to be essentially gutted and rebuilt, modified or retrofitted to meet the new standards,” Tripp wrote.

Instead of taking bids for builders separate from the design team as in the initial process, Dickerson said a design and build team working together brought the AHRC up to compliance.

Despite its setbacks, Dickerson called the approximately 75,000 square feet, $40-million building the “jewel in the crown” of research facilities at the University.

For more information on the AHRC, visit the center’s Web site, www.vet.uga.edu/ahrc.