Tribune/Dan McGee - Dr. Sanford Barsky, the head of the department of pathology at the University of Nevada School of Medicine's newly opened Center for Molecular Medicine, uses a graph to illustrate the research he's doing on breast cancer. He and other department heads were on hand for a media tour Monday prior to a public open house held on Saturday.
His search for answers will be significantly helped by greater access to new equipment and double the space of current facilities provided by the University of Nevada School of Medicine’s new Center for Molecular Medicine.
“We will be equipped with cold rooms with minus-70 degrees to store specimens, access to liquid nitrogen and dry ice pumped in,” Barsky said. “We had access before but not by technical means. We had to scoop dry ice. Before, we had a room that was 600 square feet in space and that’s not conducive … ergonomically.”
Monday’s grand opening of the Center for Molecular Medicine opened UNR’s School of Medicine to a whole new playing field on multiple levels in national biotech opportunities, laboratory clinics and a new interdisciplinary approach to training doctors and nurses. The center is the first new building for research on the UNR campus in about 30 years and will house programs that will examine preterm birth, breast cancer, asthma, stroke, neurodegenerative diseases, herpes and others. It is also the headquarters of the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease and home to UNR’s Center for Healthy Aging.
“This is the biggest single event and startup in the state of Nevada since (the university) was founded,” said Dr. Iain Buxton, a pharmacologist with the university for 25 years.
Buxton, who came to UNR in 1985, said the school has progressed in its facilities since it was a trade school in the 1970s to a full four-year program. It finally achieved full medical school status in the early 1980s. The center’s facilities, he said, are “bigger and smarter” than any research building UNR has had, creating and expanding opportunities to a public that may not be aware of what the school can offer.
Researchers, staff, graduate students and undergraduate students who have an interest in pharmacology, microbiology, pathology, physiology and cell biology all will have access to labs with energy-efficient heating and cooling capabilities.
“This building came with gifts,” Buxton said. “If I were to hire a scientist … it could cost half a million to a million for startup. This building has the latest, greatest equipment. My program literally has doubled its capacity, which is absolutely a wonderful thing for us as a university.”
The Whittemore Peterson Foundation was founded by Annette Whittemore after her 11-year-old daughter became sick with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). The venture was a collaboration of Annette, her husband, Harvey Whittemore, and Dr. Daniel Peterson of Incline Village. When the Whittemores couldn’t get answers on what was ailing their daughter, Andrea, Annette did research on her own, advocated for a medical foundation and pushed to create a biomedical research center to help families with needs like her own.
“We were on a search for answers,” Annette said at the opening of the center. “This opening represents the vision we had committed to research, focusing our energies with our doctors and patients (to helping others). … As a mother, we all recognize when our children are sick. My daughter was happy, social and active and it became clear to me that she was sick.”
Peterson eventually diagnosed Andrea as having CFS. Today, she is 32 and doing well, Annette said.
Harvey Whittemore credits the vision of the Center for Molecular Medicine to his wife and her work with former Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn and former UNR President John Lilley to get the project off the ground.
“This is an on-campus phenomenon,” Harvey said. “This isn’t a case where one plus one equals two. It’s one plus one equals 20 because it expands the opportunity to bring UNR on a national and international level to compete and it will expand opportunities for employment.”
Annette said the program will give assistance to the community and to patients who have been “shrouded in mystery” about those diseases of which so little is known.
University President Milt Glick said, “This is one of those exciting days in the life of a university when you will be able to say, ‘OMG! You really did it!’ ”
Drawing national attention as well is the university’s move to consolidate its health care programs on the north end of the campus, a move that has not been successfully done at any other university, according to officials.
The school cost $77 million, with $12 million coming from the Nevada Legislature and the bulk of $60 million in federal funds produced by UNR’s research activities with additional funding contributed by the Whittemore Family Foundation.
Ground was broken for the project on March 5, 2007, with general contractor Clark and Sullivan beginning construction in December 2008.
The university will also bring in 15 research teams with senior staff moving in during the fall semester.
Barsky said he is excited that the bigger, more spacious lab areas will invite collaboration between researchers even as they work on different experiments for different causes.
“We will have labs without walls,” Barsky said. “One student might be studying herpes and another studying neurological disorders. I believe all big breakthroughs happen by accident and it’s best achieved by a common concurrence.”
On Saturday, the center will be open to the public from 10 a.m. to noon. It will be one of the few chances the public has to view the building in its entirety because there will be security measures installed that prohibit certain areas for research to only the staff.
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