Collaboration key to WIMR researchers

The east tower of the new Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research is about to celebrate its grand opening, and already the building is working to foster collaboration among scientists working on similar problems — including the scourge of cancer — from different angles.

Orthopedics professor Wan-Ju Li’s research involves taking adult stem cells and growing them in the lab into cartilage. Some day, these custom-engineered tissues may heal knees destroyed by sports injuries and joints riddled with arthritis.

But to quickly get his research from the lab into the people who need it, Li needs collaboration from colleagues ranging from cell biologists to engineers to transplant and orthopedic surgeons. The highly recruited Li, who arrived last winter from the National Institutes of Health, says the new WIMR is one reason he chose Wisconsin over other institutions.

“This is the reason I want to work here,” says Li. “I can see the collaboration is already happening for my lab. When I need bone marrow [from which to isolate adult stem cells] I can just talk to my colleagues next door.”

The first of three WIMR research towers will celebrate its grand opening with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 1 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 4, followed by refreshments and tours of labs by School of Medicine and Public Health researchers.

With a particular emphasis on cancer research, WIMR is designed to allow researchers to work with scientists from other disciplines, speeding the transfer of science to the people who will benefit from it.

“The work that takes place in this building will translate into every nook and cranny of the state, embodying the Wisconsin Idea,” says Robert Golden, dean of the School of Medicine and Public Health.

Paul DeLuca, associate dean for research and graduate studies in the School of Medicine and Public Health, says WIMR meets a long-standing need on campus.

“This really started back in the early 1990s, when we realized that we had to structure our research environment differently to facilitate research,” he says.

The state gave permission for an arrangement that allowed the school to “shell out” the building, then finish floors as funding became available. DeLuca says the arrangement “allowed us to build as fast as the funding flowed.”

The UW Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center (UWCCC) will have some administrative offices sharing the top floor of the seven-story tower with prostate-cancer researchers. Breast cancer researchers will have the sixth floor; funding for prostate and breast cancer research space came from two $7 million federal grants.

The fifth floor is devoted to Li and his colleagues in orthopedics and regenerative medicine, who share that floor with surgery researchers.

Floors three and four will be dedicated to researchers working on cancers affecting children, and cancers of the blood, lungs, head and neck.

The second floor houses core laboratory resources and mechanicals.

Below ground, two floors provide a new home for the world-class programs in imaging and radiation sciences, important in moving research from the lab to the bedside.

The upper level is home to the UW Hospital and Clinics outpatient radiotherapy unit, where patients will receive diagnosis and treatment, connecting the cutting edge treatments being done at UW Health and the research taking place at WIMR.

The medical physics department, along with numerous collaborators from the radiology department, will occupy the lower floor, which is specially structured to be vibration-free. With tools ranging from three-dimensional microscopy to a new, 30-ton cyclotron and linear accelerator for PET molecular imaging studies and research, activity on this floor includes the latest advances in medical imaging.

The lowest floors of the second tower, which contain vivaria for research animals, are nearly complete. DeLuca says that fundraising for the upper floors of the $145 million second tower should allow construction to begin soon. The second tower will provide research space for the neurosciences, cardiovascular sciences, and cellular and molecular sciences.

The entire three-tower complex is expected to be complete in about 2015.

The first tower incorporates art with the sciences. The sail-like window wall is studded with metallic “sparkle strips,” and its subtle linear grid represents the underpinnings for tomotherapy, the cancer treatment invented by SMPH researchers. Inside, there’s a hanging aluminum sculpture by Cliff Garten, which extends through floors seven through three. Outdoors, the new “Healing Garden” marks the place where the research tower, the hospital and the learning center come together.