director of Slater Center
for Biomedical
Technology. (Al Alexio)
Last month, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson told a Brown University audience that the Bush Administration plans to double the National Institute of Health budget by 2003. Members of Brown’s biomedical-research community were hanging on every word.
That’s because Brown is positioning itself to garner its fair share of that increased funding with plans to build a new $94 million, state-of-the-art life sciences building. The new facility should allow Brown to leverage the infusion of NIH funding at a time when biomedical breakthroughs are happening at a frenetic pace.
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“We’re in the midst of one of the great revolutions in modern science and biomedical research,” said Donald J. Marsh MD, Dean of Medicine at Brown Medical School. “(Brown) needs a first-class facility to fully participate in the new discoveries that will continue to unfold.”
Brown officials say the building should serve as the centerpiece of the university’s efforts to recruit top-flight medical faculty and students. The facility also is needed to quell a growing demand for research space on campus.
The new building will connect to the university’s biomedical research center on Meeting Street, between Brown and Thayer Streets. It will house three of Brown Medical School’s main departments: cognitive and linguistic science, neuroscience and the molecular biology, cell biology and biochemistry (MCB) department.
Under the umbrella of those departments are genetics research and the recently created brain science center – two of the school’s most innovative programs. Both will be expanded and enhanced in the new building through the addition of cutting-edge research capabilities.
For example, Brown’s work with transgenic animals – or genetically manipulated animals – now is hindered by a lack of space. “We’re not doing as much as we’d like with transgenic animals right now because we don’t have the appropriate facilities,” said Peter Shank, associate dean for research and graduate studies in Brown’s Division of Biology and Medicine.
Shank said the new facility would enable Brown scientists to produce transgenic animals in the lab, rather than relying on specimens from outside labs. Brown recently received an $11 million NIH grant to help fund genetics research.
The new building will improve the brain science program by adding a functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) machine, which is a relatively new brain-scanning technology that interprets human brain activity.
Overall, the building’s design includes about 60 new laboratories, which will expand the university’s lab space by 50 percent, according to the Brown News Bureau. Labs will account for more than 70 percent of the building’s space, with the balance comprised by offices and an 80-seat auditorium.
Design plans also include a three-story, glass-enclosed lobby, which will connect the new structure to the existing biomedical center. No classrooms are included in the design, according to Francis McCrossan, the executive dean for administration at Brown Medical School.
While the importance of the new facility to Brown’s biomedical-research efforts is apparent, McCrossan said the benefits of the new facility would reach beyond Brown’s gates.
“This certainly will be a tremendous asset to the state of Rhode Island, both in terms of access to the latest medical technologies and as an economic-development opportunity,” he said.
There’s little question that Brown’s new biomedical infrastructure will bolster Rhode Island’s fledgling biotech industry. Areas that have become hotbeds of biomedical research in the United States — including Boston, San Francisco and North Carolina’s Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area — are anchored by prestigious academic biomedical programs.
David Livingston, executive director of Rhode Island’s Slater Center for Biomedical Technology, said Brown’s future life sciences building should open the door for greater collaboration between private biomedical researchers and Brown’s medical faculty.
But the most important benefit, Livingston said, will be an enhanced pool of qualified scientists.
“The biotechnology industry is growing fast here, and there is a real thirst for new hires that are properly trained in biological sciences,” he said.
Brown has ramped up its biomedical research efforts in recent years, McCrossan said, which has accelerated the crunch on the school’s research facilities. “We’re bursting at the seams, partly because our faculty in the medical school has been highly successful securing external grant money from the NIH,” McCrossan said.
Over the past five years, Brown’s federally funded research activity has grown 80 percent, McCrossan said, ranking Brown in the top one-third of NIH-funded schools for biomedical research nationally.
Today, the school’s medical research facilities are spread among buildings, some of them more than 60 years old, which renders them virtually obsolete in today’s research field, McCrossan said.
The building’s $94 million price tag – which has grown from an $80 million estimate since plans for the building were announced in 1999 – will be funded through a combination of bonds, fundraising and NIH grant money.
The design of the building is roughly 40 percent complete and should be finished by September, according to the Brown News Bureau. Construction should begin soon after, with completion scheduled for the fall of 2003. Philadelphia-based architecture firm Ballinger is designing the building.
Plans for the building are wending their way through the city of Providence’s approval process. Last week the city granted the university a zoning variance to allow the building to exceed the maximum 75-foot height. The design calls for an 85-foot height.
While there was little opposition to the building’s proposed height at the zoning board hearing, several nearby residents and business owners voiced concerns about parking – both during the two-year construction phase and once the building is completed.
Brown planning officials acknowledged the potential for a major parking problem and said they are about to select a nearby site to build a parking garage for the new facility.
