Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI), an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center, is in the midst of a Major Modernization Program, by which the year 2002 will replace and/or renovate nearly all of the buildings on its 25-acre campus. A new Medial Research Complex Building (MRC) including a centralized Vivarium, was completed in December 1997. Since the early phases of major modernization, a portion of the MRC, including biosafety level 2/3 laboratories, has been planned as shell space. However, as the project has progressed, events beyond the Institute's control including the imposition of a project labor agreement, and the engineer's $15 million underestimate on the reconstruction of the Institute's power plant have resulted in an increase the amount of shell space in the MRC. An NIH construction grant and RPCI matching funds will be used to fit-up 10, 164 net square feet of shell space in the MRC including a glasswasher and two cold rooms for the Mouse Molecular Genetics Program. The five investigators compromising this Program (Drs. Elliot, Gross, Held, Manly, and Swank) have extramural grants totaling $1, 414, 774 in direct costs in the current year (current support from NIH is $1, 365, 873). Climate-controlled connections will link the MRC with the adjacent Vivarium, and new hospital, scheduled for completion in 1998. Construction of new facilities will synergize ongoing efforts in mouse molecular genetics and the identification of key genes involved in cancer and human disease through animal modeling and other developing technologies.
