On the 2422th Executive Meeting of National Taiwan University, the Zoonoses Research Center that is affiliated to the College of Bio-Resources and Agriculture was finally established on February 21, 2006. In order to be able to conduct research professionally and safely while meeting the P2-Plus biosafety level, the laboratory is currently located in VM1 building.

The increase in the incidence rate, the geographic distribution and the development of resistance towards the antimicrobial drugs in regard to the emerging infectious diseases has brought to the establishment to Zoonoses Research Center. Moreover, some of the diseases which were known to be under control in the past tend to re-emerge. The examples of emerging diseases include SARS that occurred in many countries from 2002 to 2003; H5N1 outbreak in Hong Kong in 1997, which has continued to spread within China and Southeast Asia from 2003 to date. Other than that, there are also some people from Europe or African countries that have been infected by the Influenza virus. These infectious diseases have brought an unprecedented negative impact towards affected countries even worldwide in aspect of the economy, people’s livelihood and the society.

After researching the emerging and reemerging infectious diseases, it is determined that they are categorized under “Zoonotic Diseases”, which means, other than humans, these diseases can also exist in other types of animal hosts, thus making the prevention and controlling of the disease to be more challenging. In order to be able to establish the most effective control method towards the zoonotic diseases, one must have a more complete knowledge regarding its natural history. So, what is the knowledge of natural history? It refers to the occurrence of the pathogen in nature, the process of how it spreads from wild or domestic animals and their products to humans. Therefore, with the goal of protecting the health of the citizens and animals, the College of Bio-Resources and Agriculture of National Taiwan University integrated the professors and facilities of the related field, planned and established the Zoonoses Research Center to improve the monitoring, diagnosing and prevention of zoonotic diseases at the level of research, outreaching projects and education training. The Zoonoses Research Center serves as a communication platform of the College for zoonotic related research, such as to promote integrated research projects, to obtain research resources and to build a service network for biosafety core research laboratory and core technology.