(12/19/11) Trudeau Institute in Saranac Lake was one of the big winners when it was announced earlier this month that the North Country has been awarded $103 million in state economic development funds.
The nonprofit biotech research center will receive $1.2 million to modernize its laboratory facilities and recruit additional scientists and research teams. But that wasn't all.
Tucked into the $62 million dollar award for the Capital Region was a $1 million allocation to the State University at Albany for a biotechnology corridor that includes Trudeau. Chris Knight reports.
A press release on the University of Albany's
website says the biotech corridor initiative will foster a growing
biotechnology presence in Saranac Lake and will complement the biomedical
research institutions and biotechnology companies across the Capitol region.
The specifics of how the university and Trudeau
plan to work together are unclear. Trudeau officials declined to
answer any questions about the partnership when contacted last week.
But the biotech corridor initiative isn't the
only project Trudeau and SUNY Albany officials are working on. The university
is planning a $150 million Biomedical Information Innovation Research Plaza on
its uptown campus and lists the Institute as one of its partners in that
project.
Trudeau's partnership with SUNY Albany comes in
the wake of a decision earlier this year by the Institute's board to stay in
Saranac Lake. As part of an ongoing strategic planning initiative, Trudeau
officials had considered relocating the Institute closer to a clinical research
hospital or university campus.
The funding for recruitment of new scientists at
Trudeau is also timely. The Institute lost several of its top researchers
recently and was forced to lay off nearly a dozen scientific and support staff
earlier this year due to a 25 percent drop in research revenue. The bulk of the
research performed at Trudeau is funded by federal grants from the National
Institutes of Health.
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