Industry News

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis will begin construction in fall of 2010 on an expansion of its genomics data center. Doubling the size of the existing 16,000-sf facility, the completed 32,000-sf building will house advanced sequencing and bioinformatics technologies. The project is supported by $14.3 million in stimulus funding from the National Center for Research Resources.

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is partnering with Battelle, IBM, Merck, and GE Healthcare to plan the construction of a vaccine factory in the Pittsburgh area. Operated in partnership with the federal government, the facility would support rapid response to bioterrorism and infectious disease threats. The construction cost of the vaccine factory is estimated at $900 million.

India’s National Institute of Virology is building a BSL-4 laboratory in Pune, Maharashtra. The facility is slated for completion in December of 2010. The lab will provide research facilities for the study of infectious diseases and pathogens including H1N1.

Wishard Hospital began site work in early spring of 2010 for a 1.2 million-sf replacement hospital in Indianapolis. The estimated construction cost of the project is $754 million. The 11-story facility will provide 315 inpatient beds, 18 operating rooms, four interventional labs, and 12 labor and delivery rooms. The emergency department will house 90 treatment beds and a 20-bed clinical decision unit. Completion is expected in late 2013.

Lotus Pharmaceuticals began construction in March of 2010 on a nine-story building in Beijing. Housing offices, R&D facilities, production space, and storage, the project will include GMP pharmaceutical manufacturing suites.