Drug Design and Development Centre at UQ teams up with CSIRO.

3D Centre expands following research success.

The University of Queensland's Centre for Drug Design and Development (3D Centre) and CSIRO are jointly supporting a $350,000 refurbishment of levels seven and eight of the Gehrmann Laboratories at St Lucia.

Centre deputy director Dr Paul Alewood said the 3D Centre was "bursting at the seams" and had taken out an additional floor's accommodation to support its growth from 10 staff in 1991 to the current complement of 60 staff and 20 postgraduate students.
are also taking the opportunity to share space with several CSIRO research groups who will join us in the Institute for Molecular Bioscience,i he said.

The $100 million complex housing the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) will be Australia's largest biological research facility when completed in early 2002. The complex, on University land at St Lucia, will house 700 world-class scientists involved in biological discovery in the areas of human disease, agriculture and the environment.

Construction starts early next year, and in the interim, the IMB office will be housed on level seven of the Gehrmann Laboratories, providing ready access for the co-directors designate, Professor Peter Andrews of 3D Centre and Professor John Mattick of the Centre for Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Professor Mattick is also director of the Australian Genome Research Facility, which will join the IMB, and which has set up headquarters also in the Gehrmann Laboratories.

Dr Alewood said the Gehrmann Laboratories fitout would double the space available to the 3D Centre to a total floor area of 1200 square metres and enable Centre researchers who had been temporarily located in other parts of the University to rejoin their colleagues.

"We want to centralise facilities to maximise the family culture the Centre has always enjoyed," he said.

The Gehrmann Laboratories refurbishment this year will include construction of two new laboratories for the 3D Centre o molecular biology/protein expression and purification and molecular pharmacology. The CSIRO molecular science research group will share this space as well as constructing a specialist lab for PC2 molecular biology.

Construction will be complete at the end of February, with occupancy of the refurbished areas expected early in March. Kim Wishart of the University's Property and Facilities section is project construction manager. Work is being completed by Springwood-based builders Alliance Interiors, Wilson architects and AHW mechanical and electrical consultants.

For further information, contact Dr Alewood, telephone 07 3365 1270.