Comment on this article A Neighorhood for Cures
The opening of the Congress Avenue Building, the largest campus structure in more than 70 years, adds desperately needed laboratory and teaching space to the School of Medicine and brings together previously far-flung scientists to join forces and find cures for common diseases.
March 2003
by Marc Wortman Marc Wortman’s article about genetically altered rodents, “The Magical Medical Mouse,” appeared in March 2000. Child psychiatrist Matthew State, MD, '01PhD specializes in finding the causes of disorders that show up early in life, including devastating conditions like autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and Tourette’s syndrome. But last month he left behind his headquarters in the Child Study Center, where he worked alongside other child psychiatrists, for a spot in the School of Medicine’s new Congress Avenue Building. The CAB, with its state-of-the-art laboratories and classrooms, is the largest facility the Medical School has ever built, and at 457,000 square-feet, it is only slightly smaller in teatryrms of floor space than Yale’s two largest buildings, Payne Whitney Gymnasium and the Sterling Memorial Library. But for State and other scientists, it’s not the new space that matters most. Rather, it’s the neighborhood. “It’s important to have the right resources, space, and equipment for your research,” says State. “But what sets the CAB apart is the intellectual environment.”
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“To live in the midst of scientists who have worked on these problems is an amazing opportunity.”
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The assistant professor of genetics will share his new laboratory with scientists who, for the most part, know little about neuropsychiatric disorders that tend to show up before adulthood. But his colleagues can sleuth out the complex links between a person’s genetic inheritance and environment that may lead to disease. The conversations State has with fellow researchers in the lab and the halls will be essential as he seeks to break new ground in tackling the childhood disorders. “The CAB,” he says, “is an embodiment of exactly why I looked outside child psychiatry. To live in the midst of scientists who have worked on these problems is an amazing opportunity.” The hope that such collaborations could have a major impact on science and health led Yale to make an unprecedented investment in constructing the new laboratory and teaching complex. And State will be far from alone in drawing on those around him for help in finding new ways to diagnose and treat currently intractable diseases. When it opened last month, the CAB added about 25 percent more lab space to meet the needs of 700 of the medical school’s scientists. The facility also includes technologically advanced teaching laboratories for the 136 first-year medical and physician associate students. The building, the biggest Yale has constructed in more than 70 years, is the Medical School’s response to a shortage of lab space able to meet the demands of modern research and teaching. At a price tag of $176.6 million, it represents Yale’s single largest capital investment ever and a big part of the half-billion-dollar commitment made by President Richard Levin in 2000 to expand and renew Yale’s medical facilities over the next decade. Many consider the CAB long overdue and, as large as it is, only a first step for a school that has in the past struggled to meet the space and research needs of its faculty and students. In fact, the lack of room for expansion had begun to undermine the work of one of the nation’s preeminent biomedical centers. But though nobody on campus questioned the need for space, some observers questioned whether it would ever get built. In 1998, medical school dean David A. Kessler, MD warned that the School faced “a critical shortage of space . so pronounced that investigators have had to curtail their research—in a few cases even return grants—because of a lack of space in which to work.” This lack had begun to erode the school’s reputation and, during an era of unprecedented growth in public investment in biomedical science, it also undermined the ability to compete for research grants. Over the past five years, the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has more than doubled. But while the Medical School ranks fifth among its peers in total NIH grant awards—$228 million in fiscal 2001—“Yale has not gotten the share of the growing NIH budget it should have,” says Arthur Broadus, MD, the Ensign Professor of Medicine and chief of the section of endocrinology in the department of internal medicine. Along with Carolyn Slayman, deputy dean for academic and scientific affairs, Broadus co-chaired the committee that planned the new building. As Yale attempted to get the project off the ground, competing schools invested substantially in science. The University of Pennsylvania and Harvard each built four major research buildings in the past few years. But Yale has not added new medical laboratory facilities since the opening of the Boyer Center for Molecular Medicine in 1991.
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Yale scientists were lured away by competitors that offered additional lab space.
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Much of the NIH budget increase went to fund large-scale research programs, such as the Human Genome Project, which Yale did not have space to accommodate. Without room to grow, a number of scientists, particularly younger investigators, were lured away by competitors that offered additional lab space. “If we hadn’t built it [the CAB], our competition schools would have left us in the dust,” says Richard P. Lifton, MD, chairman of the genetics department. Planning for the building began in the late 1980s, but the Yale Corporation refused to authorize funds for construction because of mounting budgetary woes at the School. Since his arrival in 1997, Kessler focused on bringing fiscal and administrative order to the School. Although no major donors have stepped forth to help pay for the complex—hence the current generic name—Yale determined that it could no longer wait. “Kessler deserves a lot of credit for gaining the University’s confidence to get the go-ahead for the new building,” says Lifton. “It’s a major tribute to him.” Work began in early 2000, and the financing of the project was buoyed the next year when Yale sold a substantial portion of the revenue stream generated by licenses it held on the anti-AIDS drug Zerit. The sale netted $115 million; about $60 million has reportedly been used to fund the CAB. The building, which will be dedicated on May 2, was designed by former School of Architecture teacher Robert Venturi, of the Philadelphia firm of Venturi Scott Brown Associates (see sidebar), and the Boston firm Payette Associates. The three-part complex is composed of two block-long wings that meet in a soaring, stone-, brick-, and glass-walled lobby tucked in from the corner of Congress Avenue and Cedar Street. A narrow, raised central courtyard reaches out from the lobby to a lawn facing New Haven’s Hill neighborhood. The wings stretch back some 450 feet to Howard Avenue and squeeze within a narrow block south to Gilbert Street. Already the Congress Avenue and Cedar Street corner has formed a new center of gravity for the medical campus. That shift from the Sterling Hall of Medicine front door at 333 Cedar Street reflects a real change for the Medical School. Many of its most important activities are moving to the new building. Over the course of a complex marathon move taking place this winter, the contents of 91 laboratories, amounting to more than 200,000 separate pieces of equipment (including hazardous biological materials requiring special handling), are being packed up and hauled to the six-story south wing. Nearly a quarter of the wing’s laboratory space is reserved for new faculty being recruited to the School. A new pedestrian bridge over Congress Avenue connects the three-story north wing to the rest of the medical center. The wing contains the major teaching laboratories in anatomy and histology, along with a 152-seat auditorium and ten small conference rooms, all with state-of-the-art workstations. “It’s not just that [the new laboratories] look nice and don’t smell bad,” says Herbert S. Chase, MD, professor of medicine and deputy dean for education. “Students will bump into somebody who just gave a lecture on the way to his or her lab. Rubbing shoulders with scientists will shape the way students think about the curriculum.”
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The Animal Resources Center offers facilities for the production of genetically altered mice.
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The complex will also draw scientists and students from as far away as Science Hill. Space beneath the lobby and courtyard houses core research facilities that serve the entire University. Below ground, the warehouse-size Animal Resources Center offers facilities for the production of genetically altered mice, an essential tool for biological science, and supports a vivarium for 74,000 rodents. The Magnetic Resonance Research Center (MRRC) takes up two levels above it and will eventually house nine magnets for imaging studies of humans, animals, and cells. The expanded facility will erase the present year-long wait researchers have for magnet time, and the new magnets will greatly enhance what their experiments can “see.” “We’ll be able to move from imaging systems down to actual biological processes,” says MRRC director Douglas L. Rothman, associate professor of diagnostic radiology. “For instance, as opposed to saying a region of the brain is not functioning properly in neural imaging studies, we could say which specific neuronal circuit or neurochemical pathway within that region is not functioning.” Hundreds of windows light the loftlike lab space within the south wing, which is crowned by a two-story roof and industrial-style smokestacks that house ventilation and other mechanical systems. The wing hinges inward along its length, increasing the density of scientists working within. “You collaborate best by being close to one another,” says Broadus. Many of the people moving to the CAB come from the department of internal medicine’s research sections. The south wing will be home to two basic science programs—a new Center for Human Genetics and Genomics (CHGG) and the section of immunobiology—and programs focused on seven disease areas such as arthritis and autoimmunity, infectious disease, and vascular disease and cardiology. These were selected to capitalize on Yale’s strengths and to encourage work that translates basic science into medical advances. Child psychiatrist State will share lab space with Lifton, CHGG director, and other Center researchers who understand the complex interactions of genes and know how to apply emerging technologies to explain them. During the last decade, Lifton, the Sterling Professor of Genetics, took the eccentric path of studying rare forms of hypertension in his search for a genetic basis for the disease. The strategy paid off, and now the scientist is searching for the larger family of genes that control blood pressure. “From the moment I arrived at Yale, Rick’s work seemed to be a really important example of how to approach child psychiatric disorders,” says State, who is pursuing a similar pathway—identifying individual children or families with uncommon forms of psychiatric disorders and collaborating with colleagues in a variety of areas. “It’s an approach synergism—when something comes up, being literally across the hall decreases barriers.” According to Broadus, this is just what the building’s planning committee had in mind. “This is the golden age of biology,” he says. “Young scientists don’t feel confined by section or department. They go where the science takes them.” The hope is the Congress Avenue Building will take them as fast as possible to cures.  |
