""

about | Maps & Directions | contact | admissions | faculty | alumni & development | library | Tech Support Center | dean's office | Policies & Procedures

Nighttime view of Temple University Children's Medical Center Temple University Hospital in background, Kresge Hall (left) and Medical Research Building (right) in foreground Old Medical School building in foreground, Jones Hall, General Services building and Student Faculty Center to the right

OFFICE OF news communications

News Archive

NIH GRANT WILL EXPAND TUSM'S RESEARCH CAPACITY

May 26, 2010

CONTACT:  Renee Cree, renee.cree@temple.edu

215-204-6522

 

With 24,000 sq. ft. of research and support space, the Institute for Translational Neuroscience’s main laboratories are designed in an open-lab format divided into four zones (green), each assigned to a central research theme. Core facilities are shown in blue. Support spaces (light green) include five tissue culture rooms, a facility for live virus work, bacterial and shared-equipment rooms, freezer rooms, microscope and small instrumentation rooms, cold rooms, dark rooms, and self-contained research model procedure and housing rooms. Offices and conference rooms (blue and light blue) ring the perimeter of the floor.

With 24,000 sq. ft. of research and support space, the Institute for Translational Neuroscience’s main laboratories are designed in an open-lab format divided into four zones (green), each assigned to a central research theme. Core facilities are shown in blue. Support spaces (light green) include five tissue culture rooms, a facility for live virus work, bacterial and shared-equipment rooms, freezer rooms, microscope and small instrumentation rooms, cold rooms, dark rooms, and self-contained research model procedure and housing rooms. Offices and conference rooms (blue and light blue) ring the perimeter of the floor.

 

The School of Medicine was recently awarded an $11.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to create the Institute for Translational Neuroscience, which will enable collaborations between basic neuroscience researchers and their clinical counterparts at Temple University Hospital.

 

With money from the grant, the eighth and ninth floors of the new Medical Education and Research Building will be built out to house the new facility, providing an additional 24,000 net square feet of laboratory space. Slated to open in Fall 2011, the additional space will expand the total square footage devoted to neuroscience research at the medical school to 47,000, opening the door for the recruitment of more researchers in the future.

 

"Our research laboratories were located on several floors of the Biology-Life Sciences building on Main Campus,” said Kamel Khalili, chair of the Department of Neuroscience at the School of Medicine. “While it gave us the opportunity to train undergraduate students in the field of neuroscience and viral infections of the central nervous system, it also limited our interaction with various members of our team as well as other investigators in biomedical sciences.”

 

Khalili, Director of the Center for Neurovirology, said having a new, centralized location in the new medical school and being closer to fellow researchers would help spark new collaborations.

 

Researchers in the Department of Neuroscience in Temple School of Medicine will soon be working in the new Institute of Translational Neuroscience, an expanded research space established with a grant from the National Institutes of Health. Photo by Ryan S. Brandenberg, Temple University

Researchers in the Department of Neuroscience in Temple School of Medicine will soon be working in the new Institute of Translational Neuroscience, an expanded research space established with a grant from the National Institutes of Health.  Photo by Ryan S. Brandenberg, Temple University

 

This new space will bring together researchers from across various departments at the medical school to focus on four key areas of research — neuroAIDS, inflammation, neuropharmacology and neurodegeneration — with the goal of developing effective therapeutic strategies targeting these diseases.

 

“While possibilities abound, there are two bottom lines,” said John Daly, Dean of the medical school. “The first: clinical outcomes. The second: educating new generations of scientists and physicians to advance those clinical outcomes, today and generations from now.”

 

The institute will expand on the strong neuroscience program that already exists at Temple. The Center for Neurovirology has already received more than $80 million in grants from the NIH over the past 10 years. It features state-of-the-art technologies which have made Temple a hub for NIH-funded protocols and clinical trials in epilepsy, neuroAIDS, multiple sclerosis, neurodegenerative diseases and brain tumors.


“The new Institute for Translational Neuroscience will bring Temple neuroscience research to an even higher platform on the world stage,” said Daly.