UW biolab unlikely: school can't raise needed money

UW President Mark Emmert said in an e-mail yesterday to his top administrators that efforts to raise the $35 million needed to secure a grant from the National Institutes of Health to build the Level 3 research lab "have proved fruitless."

"In all likelihood," he said in the letter, provided to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer last night, "this will ensure that the grant will not be awarded."

Earlier yesterday, a UW official told the P-I that Emmert would report to the Board of Regents today that the university had failed to raise the money.

Emmert's announcement comes ahead of a Saturday deadline set by the NIH for establishing a source for the money. After the regents meeting, Emmert also will tell the federal agency the university doesn't have the money.

Emmert could not be reached last night for additional comment.

The UW quietly applied in December for a $25 million NIH grant to build the roughly $60 million biolab. The high-security facility would have been used to study a wide range of deadly pathogens that could be wielded by terrorists or break out on their own, such as avian flu, anthrax and the plague.

Once word of the proposal got out, neighborhood leaders were angry over the secrecy and worried that the lab posed a danger to the densely populated community.

"I'm happy to hear that it is a dead issue because from a community standpoint ... our concern was for the safety of the people and students," said Kent Wills, president of the University Park Community Club.

"As long as UW was willing to pursue having this facility on campus and near the water, it was just not a viable proposition," he said yesterday when told the news.

The lab would have been financed directly by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases arm of NIH as part of that agency's plan to create a national biodefense network.

The UW already has one part of that network in place. Samuel Miller, a university researcher who helped craft the biolab plan, won a $50 million NIH grant in 2003 to create a regional center of excellence for biodefense and emerging infectious disease research.

The government has helped build 11 of the so-called Level 3 labs and intends to award about $125 million this year to building another five to eight of the stand-alone facilities.

The UW proposal would have created a 56,000-square-foot facility built to a level of safety known as biosafety 3. It already has 30 labs built to this level on campus.

The top level is a super-secure, biosafety 4 used for handling the most dangerous bugs, such as Ebola. UW officials have emphasized that they have no desire to build a Level 4 lab.

Miller, a microbiologist, has argued in favor of the biocontainment proposal, saying the lab would have been used primarily for studying naturally occurring organisms and emerging infectious diseases such as influenza, tuberculosis, avian flu or SARS.

Those diseases, he said, are a much greater threat than rare cases of manmade bioterrorism.

Major local political leaders, including U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, also had lined up in favor of the lab, writing letters to NIH in support of the UW's application.

However, neighborhood rejection of the proposal was unanimous and fierce at several public hearings on the proposal.

In April, a group representing more than 20 neighborhood organizations sent a letter to Emmert opposing the anti-terrorism research facility, citing concerns about safety and government secrecy.

The university's own report of the public hearings concluded that if the UW built the lab on campus, it would have dealt a "devastating, if not final, blow to the community's attempt to work with and trust the university."

In June, NIH gave UW's proposal a rating of "very good," but has required more information since then, leading to a team of UW officials traveling to Washington, D.C., to defend the proposal.

Funding for the lab had always been a major sticking point. Many UW officials had acknowledged that the lab was not a priority for the medical school, which is focused on building up its current research enterprises on South Lake Union.

"Regardless of any eventual siting decision that might have emerged," Emmert said in the e-mail, "this experience points up the critical need for high-quality research space at the University and the paucity of resources available to meet the needs. We will no doubt encounter other such challenges in the future."

Albert Berger, a leading proponent of the plan and vice dean of research at the medical school, said yesterday that telling NIH that the university doesn't have the matching money "would kill the project."

"That's excellent news," said Matthew Fox, president of the University District Community Council and one of the most outspoken critics of the lab.

"For whatever reason it doesn't happen, I think it's good news for the neighborhood."

LAB PROPOSAL

The University of Washington applied in December to the National Institutes of Health for a $25 million grant to build a regional biocontainment laboratory. Here are some of the details of that proposal:

The 56,000-square-foot building would have cost roughly $60 million.

It would have contained six large Level 3 "biocontainment" labs, a 1,568-square-foot Level 3 vaccine production facility and two Level 2 labs.

The facility was originally planned for a piece of land near Portage Bay adjacent to UW's oceanography building.

More headlines and info from University District.