The Duke Regional Biocontainment Laboratory (RBL) was built with funding from NIH to support basic research to develop drugs, diagnostics, and vaccines for emerging and reemerging infections and biodefense. The RBL has a comprehensive safety and operations program to provide state-of-the-art biocontainment facilities for BSL2 and BSL3 research. The RBL was fully-commissioned in late 2007 (NIAID UC6-AI058607).