In June 2007, National Laboratory Animal Center (NLAC), National Applied Research Laboratories (NARL) passed the accreditation held by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care, International (AAALAC, International). Meanwhile, NLAC has planned and established the southe laboratory animal facility in 2008 in attempt to balance the laboratory animal resources in northe and southe Taiwan, and to build a well-rounded laboratory animal supply and R&D platform. The presence of this southe facility will make the next milestone in domestic laboratory animal science.The operation of this southe facility will pROVide the researchers in southe Taiwan the required quality, time-effective laboratory rodent resources as well as support and back-up for the NLAC Taipei. In addition, this multi-functional southe facility can pROVide the space and technical services required for animal experiments performed by biotech sectors and research institutions in southe Taiwan. NLAC deliberately designs adequate training facilities and organizes the basic, intermediate and advanced education courses to promote the laboratory animal science nationwide. Furthermore, NLAC collaborates with the prestigious academic research institutions in this filed around the area to jointly build the biotech R&D clan in southe Taiwan. NLAC southe facility is located in the core campus of Southe Taiwan Science Park, occupies area of 172,800 square feet, and has five stories and a basement. The building consists of animal breeding and production area, animal holding area, animal testing area, laboratory area, public technical service, E&M rooms and warehouses. This building is the first animal facility ever in the country to possess the unique seismic isolation system, which can resist up to grade 7 earthquake, in addition to following structure features: animal breeding and production area has four individual barriers to prevent cross-contamination; animal holding and breeding areas can be flexibly interchangeable under the regulated standard environmental control; the air conditioning runs non-stop year-long with energy-saving design; daily central Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems, which monitor AC temperature, humidity, pressure differential and air exchange rate; fully-equipped video technical training classroom; educational animal room tour hallway; Individually Ventilate Caging (IVC) system build a perfect comfortable animal breeding environment.NLAC southe facility possesses several functions, which are distinctly different and complementary to those of NLAC Taipei:1.NLAC southe facility has the largest “animal hotel” in the country for laboratory rodent testing and holding service. The Legislative Yuan passed “Biotech and New Pharmaceutical Development Act” last year, leading to the animal experiments as the criterion for this act. Correspondingly, the southe facility has taken into consideration that the domestic animal testing facility is generally deficient or the breeding environment and management skills fall short in international standards. Therefore, NLAC deliberately schemed as the first major “animal hotel” feature to receive and accommodate live laboratory animals sent from other institutions for laboratory rodent testing and holding service. The animal hotel holds 16 animal rooms and 11 procedure rooms. Each section has access control and HVAC monitoring system to pROVide constant room temperature and humidity. Likewise, the southe facility pROVides isolative IVC breeding system and germfree condition, etc. to prevent exteal factors for animal experiments and secure the experiment results. Regarding edge-cutting technology, the southe facility possesses complete services including animal genotyping, animal re-derivation and foundation preservation, etc. 2.Most developed laboratory animal medical molecular imaging centerThis plan bears to integrate research resources from National Cheng Kung University Medical School and build a unique small rodent medical imaging center in the country. In the future, the top-notch live animal optical imaging technology can pair with NLAC-possessed fluorescent laboratory animal platform, with green fluorescent protein (GFP) expressed mice and inducible disease model mice, to rapidly display the physiological function and structural variation, and to perform reaction experiment on inducible diseases. Live animal optical imaging technology can also be employed on laboratory animal disease diagnostics, new pharmaceutical compound development and screening, translational medicine and etc. Consequently, the domestic biotech research can advance with higher quality and lower laboratory animal usage.3.The first laboratory animal room for public visitThe environmental condition in laboratory animal rooms is specific pathogen free (SPF). Breeding technicians and managers have to take shower, wear sterile headwear, mask, clothes, shoes and gloves before entering the room; so generally the rooms are not open for public. The NLAC southe facility designed the tour windows in animal rooms to promote public understanding to laboratory animals and arouse students’ interest in biomedical research. Visitor could be impressed on how laboratory animals live in animal rooms, and this implanted picture may one day grow into a life-long dedication. 4.Advanced education and training classrooms for laboratory animal scienceTechnical training classrooms for laboratory animal science do not only pROVide technical teaching and training resources, but also the hand-on experiment facility and experience sharing forum to address and impROVe the traditional theoretical teaching. The classrooms have advanced surgery table with instant videotaping and high definition projection for teaching use. Instructors can utilize such apparatus to clear convey the training program to all students in the course, substantially elevate the limited teaching capacity in the past when students had to crowd the surgery table with eyes popping to watch the experiment procedures.5.Newly established foundation stock All foundation stocks in NLAC Taipei are obtained abroad. According to our mature technology and prevention of contamination in long-distance transportation, now NLAC southe facility, for the first time, employs well-developed isolator operation and germfree animal breeding techniques to establish SPF foundation stock.Following the “Post Genome Era”, genomic medical research must have integral animal testing resources for support of basic research, new drug development, efficacy testing and pre-clinical toxicology, etc. NLAC southe facility now operates to pROVide all mentioned above and other required for biotech and pharmaceutical development, including international standard animal breeding room, corresponding animal testing training and technical development resources. In the future, NLAC southe facility will fully runs to become to infrastructure of Southe Taiwan Science Park and also push forward the pace in internationalization of domestic biotech sector.