Centre for Comparative Medicine

The University of British Columbia Centre for Comparative Medicine (CCM) is unique to British Columbia and is the largest facility of its kind in Western Canada. Spanning over 53,800 sf (5,000 square meters), the UBC CCM provides the flexibility to house and conduct research on medium- to large-sized animals and a variety of zoological species.

An integrative center with extensive experimental surgical capabilities, the CCM includes double table operating rooms, full BSL-2 capable diagnostic labs and pathology area, imaging suites with digital x-ray and fluoroscopy, multi-functional procedure rooms, and behavioral research facilities.

Located at the UBC South Campus, adjacent to the Tri-University Meson Facility (TRIUMF) and the National Research Council Institute for Fuel Cell Innovation (NRC-IFCI), the CCM provides 24-hour on-site technical care for animals, and employs over 20 operational and technical staff.

The CCM is home to UBC’s Animal Care Services, which provides a materials management service that features the ability to handle short-time daily orders for animals and materials and a daily truck delivery system to major hospitals in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. UBC’s Animal Care Services transports live animals via the CCM from a variety of barrier facilities worldwide.

With a $39 million capital cost and an annual operating budget in excess of $2 million, the research facility is funded by UBC in combination with a fee-for-service model providing services to the BC Preclinical Research Consortium.

The CCM is also home to a Preclinical Imaging Research Core (PIRC) facility, working in conjunction with TRIUMF, the UBC Hospital Department of Nuclear Medicine, and the departments of Neurology and Neurosurgery. The PIRC’s mission is to provide the research community with a multi-modality imaging environment for large- and small-sized animals, with access to expertise in novel imaging isotopes development available from the nearby TRIUMF accelerators.

The imaging environment is complemented by onsite surgical, behavioral, and pathological medical expertise. The facility provides an opportunity to implement translational medical research from bench to bedside; from the understanding of disease processes, to the pre-clinical development and evaluation of therapies, and the validation of new biomarkers. The core research areas in the PIRC facility are neuroscience, spinal cord injury, and neurosurgery. The PIRC includes a micro PET/CT facility and an isotope receiving/preparation laboratory linked to TRIUMF via high-pressure “rabbit” air line for pre-clinical work using novel short-lived isotopes generated from the TRIUMF beam line.

The CCM buildings were sited to maximize natural daylight in low-cost indoor/outdoor animal housing, and utilize berms and visual barriers to create security buffers from public areas. A complex of single-story buildings creates necessary adjacencies between holding, laboratory, and service elements, while allowing all research to happen on the same floor. Unifying the diverse programmatic spaces under a large folded roof allows for system flexibility, access to natural daylight, passive heating, and storm water collection. East-facing monitors drive morning light into the heart of the main building and allow preheating during the winter and natural ventilation during the summer. The CCM buildings also feature the use of a bioswale, which filters all the water from the outdoor holding area and purifies it before it leaves the site.