Press Release

For Immediate Release
Contact: Susan Preston
(973) 972-7265

National Institutes of Health Awards Almost $21 Million To Build Biosafety Laboratory for Biodefense Research

New Effort Designates Only Eleven Centers Nationwide for Funding

The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) was notified today (Sept. 30) that it will receive almost $21 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to build a regional biocontainment laboratory whose focus will be research on diseases caused by agents of bioterrorism and newly emerging infectious diseases.

The new facility, which will be built at the International Center for Public Health (ICPH) in University Heights Science Park in Newark, will be the third such facility in Newark.

Eleven biocontainment laboratories are being awarded construction grants nationwide, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH. The exact amount of the UMDNJ grant is $20,880,305.

This announcement follows NIAID's designation three weeks ago of eight Regional Centers of Excellence (RCE) for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Disease Research, including the Northeast Biodefense Center, whose membership spans institutions in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Puerto Rico. Both UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical and the Public Health Research Institute (PHRI), which share space in the ICPH, are members of this consortium.

In addition to the Public Health Research Institute, UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School's Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics and National Tuberculosis Center are housed at ICPH, along with the administrative offices of the Newark unit of the UMDNJ- School of Public Health.

ICPH, which opened in 2002, was designed as a state-of-the-art facility for advanced infectious disease research.

"When we built ICPH and brought UMDNJ and PHRI scientists together, our intent was to establish a symbiotic relationship between leading scientists that would attract large federal grants and establish Newark as a major focal point of infectious disease research," said Dr. Stuart D. Cook, UMDNJ president.

"NIAID's decision to locate a regional biocontainment laboratory at ICPH makes sense not only because Newark already has a major concentration of infectious disease research expertise, but because New Jersey is the home of many pharmaceutical companies, which are a critical element in developing the new vaccines and therapeutics that will be needed to meet the public health threats we face," said Lewis Weinstein, PHRI president.

The ICPH already contains a 7,500 square foot BSL 3 and animal facility. The UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School also operates a 1,000 square foot Biosafety Level 3 laboratory, the centerpiece of its Center for Emerging Pathogens, in the Medical Sciences Building on the university's Newark campus.

These two BSL 3 facilities are being utilized by 10 laboratories working on tuberculosis and five working on biodefense.

The new biocontainment facility at ICPH, designed as a stand-alone facility, will add an additional 13,000 square feet of Biosafety Level 3 laboratory and animal support space.

In addition to accommodating a growing number of infectious disease and biodefense researchers in Newark, the facility will serve the immediate and expanding containment laboratory needs of the 208 RCE scientists in the Northeast Biodefense Center.

The current five principal investigators pursuing select agent studies will as the nucleus for recruiting five to seven new scientists with related interests in biodefense. The RBL will also house at least two visiting RCE scientists and will support research of commuting RCE scientists for the region, more than 50 per cent of whom work within 20 miles of the Newark campus.

Dr. Nancy Connell, director of the Center for BioDefense at UMDNJ, said, "We are proud to have been selected as one of the sites in this new national effort for rapid development of the scientific knowledge required for more effective therapies, diagnostics and vaccines to meet the infectious disease threats facing the nation and the world, whether it's anthrax or SARS." The Center for BioDefense was established three years ago by UMDNJ and has received more than $12.6 million in federal appropriations to develop studies of biological agents that have potential to be used in bioterrorism attacks.

"With both the new regional biocontainment laboratory and the RCE designation, Newark has been jettisoned into the national arena and designated a major participant in this new critical national research agenda on infectious disease," said Dr. David Perlin, scientific director of PHRI, which received $2.2 million as part of the RCE designation. "We have a strong and talented group of scientists who already are engaged in significant research on the bacterial agents that could pose a major health threat to this country.

Dr. Russell Joffe, dean of the UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School and principal investigator on the grant, said, "Over the past two years, the medical school has been amassing a core of infectious disease and biodefense researchers and adding a third Biosafety Level III laboratory to our resources will certainly help us attain the level of world-class research excellence."

###