Consolidated Biomedical Core Facilities Supporting a Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Disease Research

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SUMMARY: Kansas State University (KSU) is well-positioned to become the preeminent institution to advance the discovery and development of biosecurity strategies for emerging and zoonotic infectious diseases. With KSU’s Biosecurity Research Institute (BSL-3), USDA’s Arthropod-Borne Animal Disease Research Unit, and USDA’s National Bio and Agro-Biodefense Facility (BSL-3/BSL-4), KSU is the only U.S. university with a full continuum of biosecurity level 1 (BSL-1) through BSL-4 facilities collocated on one campus. The proposed core research facility represents a critical component of our research infrastructure to support infectious disease studies and provide direct support of both KSU’s 2020 COBRE center and collocated federal facilities. The core facility will strategically combine five key disciplines: animal model/pathology, molecular and cellular biology, microscopic imaging, flow cytometry and cell sorting, and next-generation sequencing. Investigators at KSU and in the region rely on these technologies to perform high-impact research and complete experiments outlined in current and future research projects. However, existing facilities for these key technologies are inadequate in size, location, function, and flexibility. Existing laboratories are isolated from each other, spread across three buildings, and in some cases, are hosted by individual faculty members, which limits access and research productivity. The proposed core-facility suite is the final element of a three-phase renovation of the KSU veterinary complex. Phase 1 delivered a contemporary 220-seat auditorium (8,200 GSF) adjacent to Mosier Hall. Phase 2 replaced an outdated auditorium with a primary-care clinical training facility occupying the 1st floor of Mosier Hall. Phase 3, the focus of this application, proposes to build a collaborative, university-wide core research facility occupying the 2nd floor of the deconstructed auditorium space. Currently, the 2nd floor is 5,000 GSF of laboratory-conditioned shell space. This proposal will strengthen our research capacity and infrastructure by creating a centrally organized, integrated technology pipeline, with proximate expert assistance and training support to facilitate efficient use of contemporary technology in confocal microscopy, live-cell and in vivo imaging, laser capture microdissection, flow cytometry, cell sorting, DNA/RNA sequencing and CRISPR technology. The proposed purpose-built, core-facility suite will assemble state-of-the-art technologies in a single location to deliver efficient, coordinated services for academic, corporate and federal researchers in imaging and molecular analyses, thereby providing a complete range of services from whole tissues to single-cell nucleic acid analyses. A dedicated modern biomedical research facility with advanced instrumentation and technical support will foster collaborative, synergistic and transdisciplinary science. This is critical to promoting a robust research and training environment where researchers can answer the most challenging and urgent biomedical questions of our time.