McLaughlin Research institute seeks $3 million

McLaughlin eyes Congress for expansion

With a little help from Congress and its national board, the McLaughlin
Research Institute is looking for $3 million to renovate, expand and hire more
scientists.

By PETER JOHNSON
Tribune Staff Writer

Directors of the Great Falls medical research facility met with Sen. Max
Baucus, D-Mont., Wednesday to seek help in securing a congressional
appropriation.

Montana’s congressional delegation helped obtain a $1 million appropriation
last year for the Great Falls medical research facility.

That money will be used to buy equipment and reduce overcrowding in the
mouse breeding facility, MRI Director and Senior Scientist George Carlson
said. It also will expand the capability of the mouse transgenic facility so
scientists can freeze sperm and do in vitro fertilization of the mice. That
way, not as many live breeds of mice would need to be kept.

The research center is asking Baucus and his Montana colleagues to help
secure $3 million more to expand, renovate and better equip the facility,
Carlson said.

Doing so would allow MRI to increase from five to seven its principal
investigators, who secure large research grants. That likely would mean a
boost from 45 to 55 in the well-paid support staff.

In fact, McLaughlin Board President Chairman Nancy Davidson said the
institute’s National Development Council has pledged to raise $2 million to
recruit the two additional scientists if the federal government provides the $3
million.

More than a third of the $3 million would be used to expand the size
McLaughlin by about 20 feet to the north, Carlson said. Doing so would
allow MRI to reconfigure office space upstairs, creating laboratory space for
the new scientists. It also would allow the institute to expand the
cage-washing capability needed to keep more mice for research.

Overall, the changes will allow McLaughlin’s research programs to remain
productive as its scientists compete for funding to research Alzheimer’s
disease, hearing loss, blindness and such prion diseases as mad cow
disease, Carlson said.

"It would be great to be able to add two more scientists and have the lab
space and mouse facilities to support them," he said. "That would allow us
to do more research in key health issues and to provide more jobs for Great
Falls."

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