Medical research center to open in St. Louis

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- A new, $114 million medical research center created by Washington University and BJC HealthCare is expected to open in 2009, the organizations said Tuesday.

The center will be called the BJC Institute of Health at Washington University. It will share an 11-story building with Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. The center's research is intended to improve care related to several diseases.

It will serve as the home for BioMed 21, the university's initiative to link research breakthroughs more quickly to patient care.

"We realize, more than ever, business development is the way that new discoveries and research reach people," Dr. Larry Shapiro, dean of the School of Medicine, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

"It also is a way that we can give back to a community that has supported us very well."

The institute will house interdisciplinary research centers focused in five areas: cancer genomics, which will look for genetic variants that modify a person's risk or response to treatment; investigation of membrane excitability disorders, which aims to understand the cause of diseases including epilepsy and cystic fibrosis; women's infectious disease, exploring the role of bacteria and viruses in conditions like premature birth, cancer and heart disease; protein folding and neurodegeneration, improving information on the aging brain; and studies related to diabetic cardiovascular disease, which will look into how metabolic changes that accompany diabetes lead to heart disease.

It will cost $235 million to construct the new building. More than half of the funds, $121 million, is coming from Barnes-Jewish Hospital which will use about half the space for other needs, like offices, medical records and food service.

BJC is making a $30 million gift to establish the institute, which will fund part of Washington University's $114 million in costs. The university is financing the rest with $49 million from research grants and contracts; $10 million from existing reserves; and $25 million in debt, said university spokeswoman Joni Westerhouse.

Additional space in the building will be used by Washington University to attract new researchers. It also is spending $10 million to build a 16,000-square-foot data center to increase computing power for the Genome Sequencing Center, one of four centers in the world focused on decoding human DNA.

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Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch: www.stltoday.com