University of Pittsburgh Opens Regional Biocontainment Laboratory

The University of Pittsburgh opened the $28 million Center for Vaccine Research (CVR) in late September of 2007. Located on the eighth and ninth floors of the 330,000-sf Biomedical Science Tower 3, the CVR is comprised of two facilities, the NIAID-funded Regional Biocontainment Laboratory (RBL) and the Vaccine Research Laboratory (VRL). The 27,300-sf RBL contains BSL-3 laboratories for infectious disease research. The 16,000-sf VRL houses dedicated biosafety laboratories; microarray, robotic, and mass spectrometry instrumentation; office space; and conference rooms. The Center for Vaccine Research will accommodate research in structural biology, computational biology, genomics and proteomics, neurobiology, and drug discovery, with particular focus on infectious diseases such as SARS, West Nile virus, AIDS, dengue fever, and tuberculosis.