Image: Stellenbosch University
New R1.2 billion research complex “unparalleled” in southern hemisphere, says host Stellenbosch University
A state-of-the-art biomedical facility opened this week on the medical campus of Stellenbosch University in South Africa after a decade of planning and construction work.
The R1.2 billion (US$66 million) Biomedical Research Institute houses a 600 metre squared biosafety level three laboratory—Africa’s biggest—as well as a fully automated biorepository that can hold up to five million samples, with space to grow. The facility is “unparalleled” in the southern hemisphere, the university says.
The project took inspiration from famous international biomedical facilities around the world, including the Francis Crick Institute in London and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus near Washington, DC in the United States.
It’s a 10-year project that is finally bearing fruit. In 2012, huge advances were happening in biomedical research and the university’s medical campus from the 1970s was showing its age, says Nico Gey van Pittius, Stellenbosch medical faculty vice-dean for research and internationalisation.
“We saw an opportunity to not only expand on what existed, but also to expand the research enterprise,” van Pittius told Research Professional News this week, ahead of the building’s formal 14 April launch.
Attractive space
Although construction finished weeks ago, parts of the building have been populated and come into use as they became operational. Around 500 researchers and students use the building, working in areas ranging from tuberculosis and neuroscience to urology.
It has already attracted notable scientists, including Tulio de Oliveira, famous for leading teams that helped discover the Beta and Delta variants of the novel coronavirus, Sars-Cov-2. De Oliveira’s Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation has made a permanent home in the building’s newest wing.
Another senior tenant is Clive Gray, an immunology professor who until 2021 was based at the University of Cape Town.
The huge biorepository is also slowly being populated, starting with samples from around the university. This has been a great boon, not just for sample safety and management but also for aesthetics around the campus, says van Pittius.
It has made it possible to remove around 100 sample freezers from around the faculty’s buildings and corridors, where they caused security and accessibility concerns, as well as constituting a real eyesore, he notes. The repository will also house samples from other institutions, for a small fee.
Home-grown funding
Funding for the project came almost wholly from within South Africa, van Pittius says—mainly from the university as well as the faculty, with a “large component” coming from the country’s government. He calls this “an accomplishment”, since similar investments in the past have often had significant international donor backing.
The facility is also protected from South Africa’s persistent electricity supply woes, with a system of generators and backup power sources in place to protect sensitive equipment and safeguard samples.
South Africa’s research purse has been under strain for several years—but that is not a major threat for the facility, van Pittius says, since most of the research taking place in it is funded by overseas grants.
Van Pittius believes more researchers will want to join the facility, both from around South Africa and further afield. “It’s a beautiful building and it really creates a space that people like to be in. In fact, I’m still disappointed my own office isn’t in there,” he says with a laugh.