At the heart of the Washington University School of Medicine campus in the Central West End, an 11-story beacon of glass and steel rises, the nexus of the school’s biomedical research. Neon-green walls, adaptable laboratories, and a wealth of natural light noticeably differ from the campus’ nearby brick buildings. Inside this state-of-the-art facility—the largest in the medical school’s history—researchers collaborate in modern labs and eat lunch in common areas overlooking the city.
Here at the BJC Institute of Health, a $235 million project more than two years in the making, a new approach to biomedical research is under way: an interdisciplinary method where scientists work together to find cures for specific diseases. “We’ve always collaborated across the park,” says Dr. Larry Shapiro, Wash. U.’s executive vice chancellor for medical affairs and dean at the School of Medicine, “but to actually have people rubbing shoulders with one another, we believe, will create a different dynamic.”
The goal is to break down walls established by traditional medical departments to expedite the discovery of new treatments and cures. Faculty from an array of disciplines—materials science, computer science, biomedical engineering, chemistry, and more—work side by side in the building. The facility’s grand opening is slated for mid-June, but scientists already have begun moving in and conducting research. “As I’ve toured the facilities, I’ve been greeted by the scientists working there,” says Steve Lipstein, president and CEO of BJC HealthCare. “They’re thrilled with the new space and love being organized around diseases, rather than departments.”
The institute is at the heart of Washington University’s BioMed 21 initiative. The idea began to take shape in 2003, around the time Shapiro came to St. Louis. “As I arrived, many faculty members were trying to conceptualize how we could take the next big step forward in our research programs,” he recalls. “There was a series of barriers in the way of making important new contributions that would benefit people.”
The med school wanted to apply the latest technologies to research, while rapidly translating fundamental discoveries to patients’ care. Its solution was BioMed 21, a multidisciplinary imperative that studies diseases’ genetic origins and seeks individualized treatments.
The initiative was built on three pillars, explains Shapiro.
The first, genomics, already has received plenty of press. In 2008, for the first time ever, The Genome Center mapped the entire DNA sequence of a cancer patient with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML); doctors and scientists are now continuing their research, identifying cancer-causing gene mutations and hoping to combat cancer at its origins. The same approach is being used for other diseases. “Genetics was being and will be applied to all areas of medicine,” Shapiro says matter-of-factly.
Imaging is another area where Wash. U. hopes to build on its strengths. Its Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology introduced the world to the PET scanner in the early ’70s, and the device has since helped physicians in the diagnosis, staging, and treatment planning of cancer, neurological diseases, and more. “The advances in imaging sciences allow us to visualize structure and function,” says Shapiro, “and it is revolutionizing our approach to addressing a lot of problems.” Cognitive neuroscientists, for instance, are now imaging the brain to understand which areas of the organ are used to solve, say, a sudoku puzzle, or how amyloid protein is deposited in the brains of patients developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Third, the university established the Institute for Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS). “That was to try to aggregate all the resources we need to carry out this translational function,” says Shapiro. The goal was to handle large-scale data sets, using computing power to discern patterns among tens of thousands of cases through sophisticated biostatistical data analysis.
“Built on those three pillars, we decided there would be a number of disease areas where we would try to aggregate expertise,” Shapiro says. “These are centers that are designed to focus on particular sets of human diseases, but they are interdisciplinary.” Housed on the building’s upper floors, the five principal research centers have long, not-so-obvious acronyms: The BRIGHT Institute (Bridging Research With Imaging, Genomics, and High-Throughput Technologies); HPAN (Hope Center Program on Protein Aggregation and Neurodegeneration); CIMED (Center for the Investigation of Membrane Excitability Disorders); cWIDR (Center for Women’s Infectious Disease Research); and DCDC (Diabetic Cardiovascular Disease Center).
The research focuses on some of the most common diseases in the U.S.
“The idea is, these are important, major medical problems—heart disease, cancer, neurological disease, infectious disease—that affect vast segments of our population,” says Shapiro. “We want to attack and approach them with the latest technology, in an interdisciplinary way, and in a way that results in translation of these discoveries to things that will actually benefit people.”
How exactly does the BJC Institute of Health spur this kind of research? Everything about the institute, created by Cannon Design’s St. Louis office to be LEED-certified (including bamboo floors and motion-sensitive heating and lighting), is designed around BioMed 21’s goals of flexibility and collaboration. In the lobby, newcomers will be greeted by flat-screen TVs that flash the institute’s latest breakthroughs. Wall-length photos of DNA strands adorn the hallways. Researchers can brainstorm on green-glass walls with a film made to be scribbled on, or in conference rooms with walls painted to function as giant dry-erase boards.
Barnes-Jewish Hospital’s ancillary services, such as blood banking and pathology, will be housed on the building’s first five floors. Washington University’s research labs, as well as members of the Division of Pediatric Surgery and Department of Pathology & Immunology, will be housed on floors seven through 10. Beyond the front door, a new plaza featuring a fountain, elaborate landscaping, and a platform with fiber-optic lighting—designed by world-renowned architect Maya Lin—will serve as a campus gathering point.
Few things are anchored down in the labs along the building’s perimeter. Gas, data, and water lines hang down from the ceiling, so they can easily be adapted to various needs. The benches are movable. Conference rooms and break areas are scattered throughout each floor. And open stairways in the center of the building allow researchers to easily travel between floors—and see colleagues.
“These spaces are quite different than our older-generation laboratories,” explains Shapiro. “Here, people from different research groups will freely mix and share certain kinds of equipment and bump into each other intellectually as well as physically.”
Such interaction should help overcome a key hurdle. “Fundamentally, people from different disciplines speak a different language oftentimes,” he says. “So we need to become multilingual—just as the best way to learn to speak Japanese is not to visit Japan once in a while, but to move there.”
And the centers are designed to adapt to changing needs in the future. “This space is flexible,” says Shapiro. “If at some point in time these centers aren’t performing as we hope, they can be sunsetted and replaced with new initiatives.”
Medical experts are enthusiastic about the institute’s potential. “If we can advance the pace of research and investigation into new and different ways to treat patients,” says Lipstein, “then we can really make a difference in the lives of the people we take care of.”
