Matt Lear is the technical director of the St. Jude Biorepository, one of the support labs that will be relocating into the new Shared Resources Center.
As work continues on the $412 million advanced research center on the campus of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, another project that will help further research efforts will soon be underway.
St. Jude is planning to build a $13.4 million shared resource center at 671 Galloway Ave. on the easternmost portion of the hospital campus. The project will be built inside an existing warehouse. St. Jude currently has 21 shared resources, or core support laboratories, that provide investigators who do laboratory-based research with access to the most advanced technology available. Several current support labs will relocate to the space, while two new labs will be housed in the center. Construction has already begun and should be completed by July.
"As we continue to develop our research infrastructure at St. Jude, the shared resource center will relocate and consolidate institutional support cores with related themes and state-of-the-art technologies into a single location," said James Morgan, Ph.D., executive vice president and scientific director of St. Jude. "These resources will provide critical support to our researchers as they continue to work toward their goals of finding cures for catastrophic diseases in children."
The shared resource center and the advanced research center will enhance researchers' capability to discover new treatments for pediatric cancer and other catastrophic diseases. The continued development of cutting-edge research and support facilities makes St. Jude a top destination for scientists and clinicians who are interested in conducting research with leading technology and resources.
Approximately 60 employees will work in the new shared resources facility when it is completed. The Center for Modeling Human Pediatric Diseases and the High Content Screening Lab are the new support laboratories that will be housed in the facility.
Existing labs that will move into the completed building include:
- The Hartwell Center for Biotechnology
- Protein Production Facility
- Preclinical Pharmacokinetics Shared Resource
- Center for Proteomics and Metabolomics
- Transgenic Core
- Laboratory Services
- Compound Management and Analytical Chemistry
- St. Jude Biorepository
The advanced research center and shared resources center are cornerstones of the $1 billion capital expansion of the St. Jude campus. Construction on the advanced research center is expected to be completed in 2021. That project is expected to bring more than 1,000 new basic and translational science positions to St. Jude.
"With the advanced research center and now the shared resources center, we continue to create an environment at St. Jude where scientists and clinicians have ready access to leading-edge resources and opportunities to pursue scientific breakthroughs," said James R. Downing, M.D., St. Jude president and CEO. "Those advances will accelerate progress in treating and curing catastrophic pediatric diseases."
