Road Ahead Building Research Programs

As part of our Academic Strategic Plan to expand the treatment, research and education programs that affect the most Americans with respiratory illnesses, National Jewish Health will continue to focus extensively on asthma/allergy and COPD/emphysema programs.

However, National Jewish Health is committed to maintaining strong research programs in all of our current research areas. Research areas to be emphasized in the recruitment of new faculty will be lung biology, inflammation, immunology, inhalation toxicology and genetics/epidemiology. All of these areas will relate to and be of benefit to other research programs at National Jewish Health, such as those in infectious diseases, interstitial and fibrotic lung diseases, occupational and environmental disorders and immune disorders such as autoimmune diseases.

Recruitment

We already have many well-known investigators at National Jewish Health. However, many will be retiring in the next decade. The institution needs an infusion of new, young scientists to take their place at the forefront of science and medicine.

In addition, modern biology is rapidly developing new methods that are vastly improving research productivity. National Jewish Health must recruit faculty with skills in these new research techniques. National Jewish Health will spend $5 million to recruit nine faculty members.

These new faculty will conduct research in:

• Lung biology
• Immunology
• Inflammation
• Inhalation toxicology
• Genetics/epidemiology

These costs include salaries for faculty and lab technicians for up to three years, equipping laboratories and seed money for new research.

Equipment

In addition to specific equipment new faculty members will require, National Jewish Health needs to upgrade equipment in some of its core laboratories, that is, laboratories that are shared by researchers. Medical science today requires highly specialized equipment, which is usually not covered by government grants. We will add $3.5 million of core (shared) laboratory equipment in the new building, remodeled laboratories and other facilities on campus. Examples include: mass spectrometers ($1 million), photon microscopes ($600,000), confocal microscopes ($500,000) and X-ray crystallography equipment ($410,000).