About BioMed 21

Launched in 2003, BioMed 21 creates a multidisciplinary and translational-research imperative for basic scientists and clinician-researchers from many different medical disciplines.

BioMed 21 reorganizes the life sciences at Washington University to address the biggest questions about disease: their origins, how they affect us and how we can cure them. Its goal is to reshape the university culture to rapidly convert the knowledge of the genetic blueprint of human beings into effective, individualized treatments.

To successfully make those discoveries and develop those therapies, BioMed 21 advances on many fronts:

• It aims to collect and dedicate resources, including NIH support and gifts from friends and supporters. Recent grants include:
• $50 million grant to enhance clinical and translational research
• $14 million in two grants for neuroscience research
• $16 million grant for nanomedicine research
• It defines new spaces to house promising research and educational programs, including:
• 240,000 square feet of new research space in the new BJC Institute of Health at Washington University School of Medicine in the center of the medical campus
• the Farrell Learning and Teaching Center, an important teaching component of BioMed 21
• a 40,000-gross-square-foot facility designed to spur development of mouse models for human diseases
• a 16,000-square-foot data center to meet the massive computing needs of The Genome Institute
• 15,000 square feet of space added to the previously established Center for Genome Sciences & Systems Biology to support new investigators

• In addition to the Center for Genome Sciences & Systems Biology, it establishes five new Interdisciplinary Research Centers (IRCs) housed in the BJC Institute of Health at Washington University School of Medicine.

  The IRCs are central in promoting scientific and educational innovations across school boundaries. IRCs have the primary goal of promoting innovative interdisciplinary, inter-departmental research and education in the biological and medical sciences. The mission of the IRCs is to assemble talented faculty and students to address key and emerging scientific problems, and to understand fundamental biological processes with broad implications for human health.

• The BRIGHT Institute (Bridging Research with Imaging, Genomics and High-Throughput)
• Center for the Investigation of Membrane Excitability Disorders
• Center for Study of Itch (CSI)
• Center for Women's Infectious Disease Research (cWIDR)
• Diabetic Cardiovascular Disease Center (DCDC)
• Hope Center Program on Protein Aggregation and Neurodegeneration (HPAN)

• To celebrate the opening of the BJC Institute of Health at Washington University School of Medicine and the establishment of Interdisciplinary Research Centers (IRCs), leaders from the School hosted the BioMed 21 Symposium on September 27, 2010. Speakers for the event, Crafting a 21st Century Biomedical Research and Training Institution, included France Cordova, PhD; Roy Vagelos, MD; George Church, PhD; Christopher Newgard, PhD; Charles Sawyers, MD; Michael Welsh, MD; Stanley Falkow, PhD; and Huda Zoghbi, MD.