Natural Products Research Center
receives funds for new building

Larry Walker and Barbara Wells discuss construction plans for expanding the Thad Cochran Research Center.

he University of Mississippi has received $31.7 million to expand the Thad Cochran Research Center, the primary research facility of the School of Pharmacy’s National Center for Natural Products Research.

“It is exciting to see the achievement of this milestone for Ole Miss and the School of Pharmacy,” said Larry A. Walker, NCNPR’s director since 2001. “This is another major step toward a world-class natural products research center, as envisioned by the school’s leaders over two decades ago.”

The Health Resources and Services Administration and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are providing $17.8 million, and the National Institutes of Health is providing $13.9 million.

Competition for the NIH funds was stiff, as each qualifying institution was allowed to submit up to three proposals to NIH’s Extramural Research Facilities Improvement Program. Under this program to renovate or construct facilities supporting biomedical or behavioral research, NIH made 63 awards totaling $675 million. UM’s pharmacy school is the only Mississippi recipient and the nation’s only pharmacy school to receive an award from this program.

Designed for research involving discovery of natural products for pharmaceutical and agricultural commercialization, construction of NCNPR’s first phase began in 1992 with USDA funds appropriated by Congress. Personnel occupied the partially completed facility in 1995, and this 115,000-square-foot building was completed in 2000.

The existing facility includes auditoriums, a science library, vivarium and repository for botanical specimens, as well as sophisticated laboratories. All enabled the center’s research programs to grow steadily and its scientists to build a reputation for advancing natural products research. It also opened doors to additional funding opportunities.

The second building will complete the NCNPR complex and enable researchers to translate basic research into clinical studies and commercial natural products. Its amenities will include a facility for clinical studies, an expanded specimen repository and laboratories for scaling-up extraction and synthesis of bulk natural products, determining a natural product’s toxicity and mechanism of action at the cellular level, and discovering microbial and marine natural products. It also includes Good Laboratory Practice-compliant analytical facilities and Good Manufacturing Practice-compliant facilities for producing, formulating and characterizing active pharmaceutical agents.

“Completion of the center envisioned so long ago is finally within our grasp,” said Barbara G. Wells, the school’s dean. “This second research building will allow us to advance our research programs to the next level of accomplishment.”

Secured by Wells and Charles D. Hufford, the school’s associate dean, the HRSA grant was to begin Phase II of NCNPR in 2010 with a four-story superstructure with only one-and-a-half floors completed. But as time for construction began, President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which provided NIH with $5 billion to create jobs while expanding research. Since the Phase II design was already complete, Walker and Hufford submitted a proposal to NIH, describing how ARRA funding, coupled with the HRSA funding, would enable the entire facility to be completed in a single construction project.

“We are especially grateful to Sen. Thad Cochran and his staff for their support throughout the years in obtaining funding for this building, and we are also grateful to our dedicated researchers who made the NIH proposal highly competitive,” Walker said.

Designed and engineered by Cook, Douglas, Farr and Lemons of Jackson, Phase II plans are undergoing thorough reviews by both HRSA and NIH. Construction is expected to begin in early 2011 and to be completed by summer 2013.

“There are so many people to thank, in addition to Sen. Cochran and Drs. Walker and Hufford,” Wells said.  “Among them are Dr. Alice Clark (UM’s chief research officer) and Dr. Leigh Ann Ross (Pharmacy’s associate dean for clinical affairs), both of whom have been strong advocates for this facility. Without their tenacity and vision, this accomplishment would have been impossible.”