A new $70 million laboratory in College Park will revolutionize the way disease and medicine research is conducted, according to those who will use it.
The Bioscience Research Building, a state-of-the-art laboratory and teaching facility being dedicated today at the University of Maryland, College Park, will house laboratories for 12 different specialties on one floor, said Dr. David Mosser. Mosser is founding director of the Maryland Pathogen Research Institute which includes the other labs.
“It?s really a multi-disciplinary facility, combining computer sciences, bioengineering, nanoscience research,” Mosser said. “We?re doing things no other medical school can do.”
The 134,000-gross-square-foot building has 35 labs for as many as 30 researchers for the study of pathogens, neuroscience and genomics. The building also houses the new Maryland Pathogen Research Institute, where researchers will study new ways to detect pathogens in the environment and to prevent and cure global infectious diseases.
It will also have two bio-safety level three laboratories for working with and containing dangerous pathogens.
The future of incredibly complex fields like nano-biosciences will require many disciplines to work together on creative solutions to ancient problems, Peter Searson, director of Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology, told a manufacturing group in Baltimore earlier this month.
In addition to Mosser?s lab on the third floor, the facility?s floors are dedicated to specific area of research: ground floor plant molecular, cell and developmental biology; first floor ? sensory neuroscience; and second floor ? comparative and functional genomics.
“Strength in the biosciences is key to the future of the state and key to continuing to build a great university in College Park,” University of Maryland President C.D. Mote Jr. said in a statement. “With the Bioscience Research Building, we take a grand step forward on both fronts.”
