By John Bach

While construction on UC's West Campus is focused on improving life for students, progress at the UC Medical Center East Campus will center around saving lives.

Administrators have folded the updated Master Plan into the Medical Center's Millennium Research Plan, which aims to double funding from the National Institutes of Health for biomedical research and add 260 funded investigators by 2006. To accommodate the new scientists, UC plans to renovate its outdated 960,000-square-foot Medical Sciences Building (MSB). 

A 200,000-square-foot addition to MSB will be constructed to house the Center for Academic Research Excellence (CARE) and to allow research to continue after scientists vacate their current space for remodeling. This new five-level facility will provide a new entry for the College of Medicine and space for state-of-the-art research labs. The complete seven-year project, expected to cost at least $170 million, involves razing the existing garage and wrapping the Medical Sciences Building with a new structure.

$100 million gift to aid research scientists

A major gift from a private drug company will also help solve UC's urgent need for lab space. In January, the UC Board of Trustees accepted a land/building donation from Aventis Pharmaceuticals that would cost about $100 million to replace. The Aventis gift includes a 23-acre chunk of land from its research facility in Reading, Ohio, and about 360,000 square feet of office and lab space. (See news brief "Manna in Reading.")

Nonprofit medical research institute

UC and Children's Hospital will develop a nonprofit medical research institute on the Reading site that will house as many as 40 senior research scientists and their staffs. Scientists working there will focus on new treatments for cancer, heart disease, neurological and behavioral disorders and early childhood illnesses.