SPOKANE, Wash. – The Health Sciences and Services Authority of Spokane County has awarded its single largest grant to date for $1.965 million to the WSU College of Pharmacy in Spokane.
The grant will match WSU start-up recruitment packages for three research-active faculty and complete the build-out of core research laboratory infrastructure for the newly opened Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences Building on the Spokane campus.
“We are quite pleased to announce this significant grant to WSU to continue to bring highly qualified researchers to Spokane and complete the research laboratory equipment needs of the new Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences Building,” said Nancy Isserlis, HSSA Board Chair. “HSSA’s role is to help grow the public and private health sciences research capacity that is so important to diversifying and growing our regional economy,” she said.
“As proven out in the first HSSA grant made to WSU’s College of Pharmacy in 2011,” said Gary M. Pollack, Dean, WSU College of Pharmacy. “HSSA’s commitment has had a tremendous return on its investment so far for them, for WSU and for this community, and we expect the same for this round of recruitments.
“These funds will help WSU Spokane continue to attract top talent to the campus and to fund critical core laboratory infrastructure required by these researchers,” Pollack said. “We simply would not be where we are today without HSSA’s support.”
HSSA requires that the researchers bring current grant funding to Spokane in their new assignments, and that they spend 75 percent of their time conducting research.
In 2011, HSSA granted WSU Spokane approximately $1.4 million for two impressive research hires and core laboratory equipment that brings HSSA’s total commitment to WSU to nearly $3.4 million. The two researchers HSSA helped fund in 2011, Dr. Phil Lazarus and Dr. Mike Gibson, have already provided in the aggregate a 14 to 1 return on the initial HSSA investment to date in extramural funding brought to Spokane along with increased numbers of employees.
The 2013 HSSA grant will match WSU funding in the recruitment start-up packages for three researchers.
In addition, HSSA’s 2013 grant will focus on the necessary infrastructure for these and other current and future researchers needed to build out two core laboratories as follows:
Microscopy & Imaging Core Laboratory, $705,000:
- Micro-CT scanner
- Intravital microscopy system
- Flow cytometry system
- Inverted fluorescence microscope
- Whole-animal image
- Nanoparticle measurement system
Pharmacogenomics Core Lab, $360,000:
- Illumina MiSeq Automated gene sequencing
- QuantStudio Spectrometer 2000, microplate reader, and real-time PCR
- Nanodrop, Spectromax, and Bioanalyzer
- Robot
WSU has agreed that the core laboratory equipment funded by HSSA will be available to both public and private researchers in the region. For more information about how to use the core laboratory facilities, visit http://www.healthsciences.wsu.edu/core.facilities.html.