Industry News

Pfizer broke ground on a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility near Thuwal in Saudi Arabia in March of 2013. Located in King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC), the 347,000-sf plant will produce 18 million packs per year. The facility will become fully operational in 2015.

India's National Institute of Virology has completed the Maximum Containment Laboratory in Pune. Established by the Indian Council of Medical Research, the BSL-4 facility is located in the existing Maximum Containment Facility and meets the biocontainment guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization. The Maximum Containment Laboratory is comprised of two suites, each providing a main lab and two animal labs. The secure facility includes a gamma radiation lab for sample processing and a training area.

Diamond Light Source, the United Kingdom's national synchrotron facility, opened the Crystal biocontainment imaging laboratory in February of 2013 in Oxford. The containment level three (CL3) facility supports the analysis of viruses and infectious diseases at the atomic and molecular level using synchrotron light.

Queen’s University began building the $51 million Centre for Experimental Medicine in March of 2013 in Belfast. Located in the Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology on the Institute of Health Sciences campus, the four-story, 97,000-sf facility will provide advanced laboratories for biomedical research with a focus on diabetes, eye disease, and genetic illnesses.

Sandia National Laboratories opened two new research facilities in the Albuquerque Science and Technology Park in February of 2013. The Cyber Engineering Research Institute (CERI) and the Cyber Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) are housed in a 23,000-sf facility accommodating 100 researchers and staff. CERL includes an innovation lab, a research center, and a human performance lab. CERI provides dry laboratories for cybernetics research.