Building relationships

New research facility to include imaging institute, other solid collaborators

The planned Iowa Institute for Biomedical Discovery (IIBD) has selected a ground–floor tenant that exemplifies interdisciplinary research, which is the foundation of this new facility.

The Iowa Institute for Biomedical Imaging is the first occupant secured for the 200,000–square–foot IIBD, to be built next to the Medical Education and Research Facility and the Carver Biomedical Research Building, beginning later this year or early in 2009.

"We felt the imaging institute was such a good example of interdisciplinary research, and serves so many people," said Michael Apicella, MD, professor and head of microbiology and interim senior associate dean for scientific affairs. For more than a year, Apicella has been leading a task force planning the design of the IIBD. A major research theme will be neuroscience, a primary user of imaging technology.

"Imaging is truly an area where the University has strength," he said.

The UI has one of the nation’s largest programs focused on biomedical imaging research, involving more than 100 UI faculty from the colleges of medicine, engineering, public health and liberal arts and sciences. In the past five years, interdisciplinary biomedical imaging groups at the UI have secured more than $33 million in external funding. The IIBD and the new UI Institute for Clinical and Translational Science will further expand collaborations.

Aging and regenerative medicine also have been identified as important areas of collaborative research focus in the $120 million IIBD, which has been promised $30 million in state appropriations. Further decisions on occupants will likely wait until a facility director is hired, Apicella said. The director will report to UI President Sally Mason.

Images derived from a CT scan of the human thorax, using highly advanced imaging technology develoed thogur UI Bench-to-bedside research

Images derived from a CT scan of the human thorax, using highly advanced imaging technology developed through UI bench-to-bedside research.

"The primary wish of the administration at the university and collegiate level is that the majority of the space be designed to bring new people into the institution, not strictly to move people here already into the space," Apicella said. "We need new recruits. We need new dollars to support the space."

The National Institutes of Health and other funding agencies are particularly interested in supporting interdisciplinary research, believing it broadens opportunities for bench-to-bedside advancements in patient care.

The IIBD does, however, intend to accommodate existing faculty through a "hotel space" plan, where collaborating researchers are assigned space for temporary occupancy, putting them in close proximity to each other’s laboratories during the early stages of a project.

"For instance, if a researcher comes up with a particularly innovative idea that needs three or four years to come to fruition, potentially this team could move into space in the building to develop that idea," Apicella said.

"We would be looking at interactive groups that bring in a significant amount of resources to work on their project–maybe six or seven investigators working as a team on one idea that has multiple parts," he said. "In this way, they would all blend together and come up with a new concept, idea or premise."

As examples, Apicella cited current UI collaborations in several research areas, including cystic fibrosis, macular degeneration, cochlear implants and biomechanics in orthopaedics.

"A lot of the research that will take place in this facility we hope will be readily translatable into applications to help people," he said.