For Rockville’s Bioqual, monkey business has been big business

Company wins $24M contract renewal

‘‘It could be any type of monkey, but not chimpanzees,” Stewart said.

Last year, the National Institutes of Health announced it would stop funding the breeding of government-owned chimpanzees for research.

Research involving chimpanzees and other primates has been targeted by animal rights advocates and members of Congress. In April, legislation was filed in the U.S. House of Representatives to further limit research on ‘‘great apes,” a bill whose sponsors include Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-Dist. 6) of Buckeystown.

‘‘As a scientist who worked with chimpanzees on research projects, I believe the time has come to limit invasive research on these animals and rigorously apply existing alternatives,” Bartlett said in a statement. Bartlett has a doctorate in human physiology and was formerly an assistant professor of anatomy, physiology and zoology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a scientist with The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, according to his biography.

Called the Great Ape Protection Act, the legislation seeks to end ‘‘invasive research” on great apes and retire several hundred federally owned and controlled great apes in laboratories to permanent sanctuaries. The bill defines a great ape as a chimpanzee, gorilla, bonobo, orangutan or gibbon.

Invasive research is defined as research that may cause death, bodily injury, pain, distress, fear, injury or trauma to a great ape, such as testing of drugs that may be detrimental to the animal’s health.

Bioqual executives could not be reached for comment this week.

The company abides by government legal and safety standards in dealing with animals, according to its Internet site. Executives are ‘‘proud of [Bioqual’s] contributions to research with investigators at the National Institutes of Health, which have led to the development of Havrix, the hepatitis A vaccine, new therapies in the fight against AIDS and the first rotavirus oral vaccine” approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the site says.

Bioqual has veterinarians on its staff who are certified by the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science, and all studies are directly supervised by technicians certified by that organization. A ‘‘world-renowned” primatologist consultant designed Bioqual’s animal environments to provide ‘‘optimal psychological enrichment” while meeting safety requirements, executives said.

Care in a research laboratory for a single great ape over the average lifespan of more than 50 years can cost from $300,000 to $500,000, according to the bill co-sponsored by Bartlett. Australia, Austria, Japan, Holland, New Zealand, Sweden and the United Kingdom have banned or severely limited experiments on great apes, the bill says.

For Bioqual’s fiscal 2008 third quarter that ended Feb. 29, company executives reported a profit of $152,506, down from $351,714 a year ago. Revenues totaled $6.2 million, up from $5.6 million. For the first nine months of fiscal 2008, sales rose by 10 percent to $17.8 million, while net income declined by 11 percent to about $850,000.