The New England Regional Biosafety Laboratory at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine was awarded a $9.5-million grant last month from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC), a quasigovernmental organization.
The lab, which was dedicated last week, will allow scientists from Tufts and the New England region, working in both the public and private sectors, to conduct research in a highly secure environment on infectious agents that may cause serious or fatal diseases through inhalation.
The grant will help offset some of the cost of construction and will mainly be used to buy new equipment to furnish the facility.
"The participation of the state government in providing us the $9.5 million will allow us to purchase all of the state-of-the-art equipment for the facility," Saul Tzipori, the director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Cummings School, told the Daily.
Three million dollars will go to the purchase of "the most sophisticated equipment, which will bring the facility to a level as state-of-the-art as there is in the nation," Tzipori said.
The remaining money, he said, will go toward the building's yearly maintenance.
This grant comes on top of a $23.1-million grant that the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has already awarded the lab. That grant, though, went toward the building's $30.8-million cost of construction; the university contributed the rest of the construction cost.
The $9.5-million grant is a product of the MLSC, which was established to execute the $1-billion Massachusetts Life Sciences Act, which was written into law in June 2008.
"Our goals [at MLSC] are to create jobs, drive innovation and support good science. This project accomplishes all three of those goals," MLSC spokesperson Angus McQuilken told the Daily. "One reason we were attracted to this investment is it will attract substantial private investment from private companies who will use this facility to advance their research."
The lab is currently in its commissioning and certification stage, which consists of a round of testing to certify that the building operates as designed, according to Tom Keppeler, the associate director of public relations at the Cummings School.
"That process is nearly complete and has been going on for the last two months or so," Keppeler said. "Once that is completed, we will then pursue a ‘Select Agents' registration with the Centers for Disease Control so we can look at infectious agents of interest for national defense."
The lab will be eased into use as funding becomes available.
"Tufts will be operating the laboratory, but in order to undertake research there, faculty will need to have funding, so we are going to be phasing in the laboratory's use as faculty get funding to conduct biosafety level-3 and -2 studies," Keppeler said, referring to the classifications for the high-level research to be conducted at the lab.
Keppeler said that Tufts already has two scientists who are qualified to work in the level-3 facilities: Sam Telford, an associate professor at the Cummings School who concentrates on vector-borne infections, and Tzipori, who focuses on enteric, or intestinal, infections.
The lab is currently hiring scientists to study tuberculosis, emerging viruses and bio-defense-related pathogens, according to Tzipori.
"This facility gives us opportunities that give us the ability to take on new programs that we were not able to do before because we didn't have the secure area to investigate disease and organisms that are very high-risk and very dangerous to work with in the absence of this environment," Tzipori said.
The lab, one of 13 of its kind nationally, will be located in the new Grafton Science Park, a 100-acre area at the Cummings School that is being developed for life science uses.
Tufts hopes that the lab will bring development to the area and create approximately 56 new construction jobs and over 20 permanent jobs.
