New Colorado University $217 million research facility set for next frontier – Labs devoted to studying basic structures of life

A new $217 million research building celebrating its grand opening Monday is devoted to dissecting the basic structures of life.

By Rachel Brand, Rocky Mountain News

http://www.insidedenver.com/drmn/business/article/0,1299,DRMN_4_3224533,00.html

Each laboratory in the University of Colorado’s new research complex was designed to reach beyond the map of the human genome, a breakthrough that revolutionized medicine four years ago.

The next frontier is finding out how the estimated 20,000 to 30,000 genes function and lead to disease.

Much of this research is new to doctors, much less the public.

The research building is the largest education building yet at the former Fitzsimons Army Medical Center. Although researchers have been migrating there over months, it officially opens Monday. Eventually, three towers will combine clinical research and basic science and link to patients at the Aurora biomedical campus.

The names of labs in the nine- and 12-story research towers reveal little. What happens in proteomics, structural biology and computational biochemistry?

"We’re trying to understand the shape and interaction of molecules," said Mair Churchill, CU associate professor of pharmacology, who oversees an X-ray Crystallography machine. "Then we can develop drugs and compounds to interact and change how molecules work."

Go next door to the mass spectrometry lab. There, proteins suspended in gel are displayed via computer in green, orange and yellow. They look like smears on a dirty windshield.

A doctoral scientist assures a visitor that the dirty windshield is part of uncovering which peptides play a role in disease.

Further down the hall, scientists are parsing how viral RNA helps viruses replicate, how genes get expressed in cells and how cells grow and divide.

"These are key technologies in structural biology – not only in advanced research – but in answering questions in all areas of science," said Jerome Scezney, CU Health Sciences Center’s Chief Planner.

In the "post-genomic world," as Scezney calls it, universities have to position themselves for glory in 10 to 15 years, not just tomorrow.

That’s why the university has embraced technologies that can chart new territory and has made them available to all academic disciplines, he said.

"We knew that to compete and place ourselves strategically," he said, "we’d have to put ourselves in that realm."

Research Complex 1 at a glance

• What: Two nine-floor and 12-floor research buildings connected by pedestrian bridges.

• Where: The University of Colorado buildings are north of the Anschutz Outpatient and Inpatient pavilions at the former Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora.

• Cost: $217 million, paid using cash from research grants and debt borrowed against future grants

• What’s happening now: Already, 820 professors, graduate students and researchers are working in the building.

• By next summer: 1,500 people will occupy the building.

• By 2008: Another $205 million research tower and a $43 million faculty office building will be built across from RC-1. The four buildings will be connected via pedestrian bridges.

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