As Ebola Research Comes to Boston, Scientists Weigh Risks
Original article from Contagion Live by Jared Kaltwasser August 30, 2018
When it comes to biomedical research, Boston, Massachusetts, is the place to be.
“This is truly the biomedical mecca of the United States,” said Ronald B. Corley, PhD, director of Boston University’s (BU) National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratories (NEIDL).
Although that may sound like something written by the chamber of commerce, it’s hard to dispute that the metropolitan area that is home to BU, Tufts, Harvard, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has an uncommonly high concentration of the world’s leading medical and scientific experts.
Perhaps it was no surprise then, that when the National Institutes of Health sought grant applications from facilities hoping to study emerging infectious diseases like Ebola, a Boston lab was one of the winners.
Dr. Corley said NEIDL’s success in the grant application has everything to do with location.
“They were looking for a couple of things in the application; one was compelling support for emerging infectious disease research,” he told Contagion®. “The second was the opportunity to build these facilities and have research activities on medical campuses.”
BU checked off both of those items and was awarded a grant equal to 75% of the total cost of building the facility, which Corley said will be about $197 million.