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Cleveland Center for Structural Biology Awarded $1 Million from State of Ohio

Great news arrived from Columbus for the Cleveland Center for Structural Biology. The State’s Biennial Capital Budget for fiscal year 2005-2006 includes $1 million to help pay for the center’s new building currently under construction on the West Quad. (Part of the building will be shared by the Wright Fuel Cell Group to research fuel cells.) The West Quad is the former site of the Mt. Sinai Medical Center.

The total cost of the Cleveland Center for Structural Biology (CCSB) project is $14 million: $4.6 million for the new building and $9.4 million for state-of-the-art imaging instruments that will be housed in the facility. Funding for the instruments has already been secured through other sources, including $3 million from the Cleveland Foundation and an investment from the university.

Cleveland Center for Structural Biology building under construction in February. ( Photo by Dave Mooney.)

CCSB’s imaging equipment will include one of the world’s most advanced ultra-high field 900 MHz NMR spectrometers. It will be used by researchers to determine the structure and function of proteins on the molecular level. This information will provide insights into what goes wrong in diseases such as Alzheimer’s, cancer, and heart disease. This can lead to the development of new drugs for treatment.

“This facility will be a critical resource for the entire state, placing Ohio researchers at the forefront of structural biology and its application to drug design and biomedicine,” said Paul Carey, Ph.D., director of the CCSB and professor of biochemistry at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. “The university is appreciative for the $1 million support in a challenging state budget environment. The investment will benefit the high tech, knowledge-based economy of the state,” he said.

CCSB was established in 1994 as a partnership among Case, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and Cleveland State University. Its goal is to meet the growing demand for protein imaging among both academic and industrial researchers.

In addition to strengthening Cleveland’s reputation as a leading center for training and research in structural biology, the CCSB can attract new investigators to area academic and health institutions and provide Northeast Ohio’s biotechnology industry with access to its state-of-the-art instrumentation.

The CCSB proposal to the state was led by Case’s Office of Government Relations with support from the Office of the President, Office of Research and Technology Management, and the School of Medicine. Members of the Cuyahoga County delegation to the General Assembly were strongly supportive of the project.

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