A stimulus-funded renovation will give the Penn State College of Medicine new laboratory space, which is expected to lure world-class research scientists.
The $3 million project involves converting offices into 9,000 square feet of space dedicated to research. The final project will be a center of drug discovery and development, says Dr. Kent Vrana, chairman of the college’s pharmacology department. The space will include a library of 60,000 molecular compounds that could someday lead to cures for disease, along with computers that model what a new drug might look like on the molecular level. The National Institutes of Health is covering $2.8 million of the cost with a grant from the federal stimulus package.
Several departments at the college are recruiting new scientists now, and Vrana says state-of-the-art equipment in the new lab will help convince top researchers to move to Hershey. “This is not so much to create new science, but to support new science,” he says.
He estimates that about 60 percent of the research at Penn State focuses on cancers like melanoma and neuroblastoma. Scientists are also looking for treatments for other conditions, like HIV and Parkinson’s disease.
The college is waiting for federal approvals before construction starts.
Source: Dr. Kent Vrana, Penn State College of Medicine
Writer: Rebecca VanderMeulen