New laboratory construction in late 2009 and early 2010 was driven by both public and private expenditures. New laboratory plans included a continuing flow of bioscience university projects in the US, as well as government-coordinated national projects worldwide. R&D laboratories for agricultural biotechnology companies and new labs for consumer products companies were also announced.

Among the planned university lab spaces are those listed in the table below, each to be paid for largely by private funding. However, public funds have also contributed to recent lab openings, as the first stem cell laboratory funded in part by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) opened earlier this year. The $62 million, 54,000-square-foot University of California (UC) Davis Institute for Regenerative Cures opened in March in Sacramento, California. The lab is the first phase in the renovation of a 90,000-square-foot building that will consolidate UC Davis’s stem cell research activities and eventually house 200 researchers.

In Southern California, the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine broke ground last month in La Jolla for its building. Stem cell researchers from the Consortium’s four members (UC San Diego, the Sanford-Burnham Research Institute, the Salk Institute, the Scripps Research Institute) will share the $115 million, 145,000-square-foot facility, which is expected to open in September 2011.

In total, the CIRM has funded 12 construction projects, 11 of which are currently being built. Expected to open this year are facilities at Stanford University, UC San Francisco, UC Irvine, the University of Southern California, UC Los Angeles, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara.

Public and private funding is also behind Sweden’s Stockholm Science City. Under the plan, SEK 50 billion ($7 billion = SEK 7.66 = $1) will be invested until 2025 to develop scientific, commercial and housing projects in a 100,000-square-meter (1 million-square-foot) area of Stockholm. Among the project participants are Stockholm University, Karolinska Institute and the Royal Institute of Technology, local and regional governments, and private businesses. New facilities will include the Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab). SciLifeLab is a joint initiative of the four universities and is described as a resource center for large-scale biological research focused on biomedicine, including genome and proteome profiling, bioimaging and bioinformatics. SciLifeLab facilities will be located in both Stockholm and Uppsala. The Stockholm facility is expected to occupy 7,500 square meters (81,000 square feet) by 2013. SciLifeLab will open this year with 75 employees, and increase to 200 employees in 2011. A new hospital, the 335,000-square-meter (3,600,000-square-foot) Nya Karolinski Solna University Hospital, is expected to open in December 2015.

In Singapore, real estate developer JTC has announced plans for Phase 4 of the Biopolis science park. Phase 4 will add 40,000 square meters (431,000 square feet) at a cost of $80–$100 million, with an emphasis on facilities for pre-clinical trails research. Phase 3 of Biopolis, which is expected to be completed this year, features space for translational research, clinical research and medical technology research. Phase 1 consists of seven buildings in a 185,000-square-meter (two-million-square-feet) area for basic research. Also devoted to basic research activities, Phase 2 consists of two buildings in a 37,000-square-meter (400,000-square-foot) area. Biopolis is home to publicly and privately funded research facilities.

On a much smaller scale, the New Zealand government recently announced a five-year, NZD 21 million ($15 million = NZD 1.40 = $1) plan to set up a Food Innovation Network. The Network will consist of four open-access R&D facilities. Each facility will have one of four focuses: plant-based ingredients and consumer products (Lincoln), processed food (Manukau), meat-based products and dairy ingredients (Waikato), and food research and training (Palmerston North). The first site is expected to open later this year. The network is designed to enable small- and medium-size food producers to develop new products.

The leaders in agricultural biotech continue to build their R&D muscle. As the table on page 4 shows, two companies, Dow and DuPont, announced expansions of their Midwestern labs this year. Not to be left behind, Monsanto also made news, as it completed its purchase of Pfizer’s 1.5 million-square-foot research facility in Chesterfield, Missouri, which contains 250 labs. Monsanto also expanded in China, opening its first research facility in the country late last year. The Beijing-based center will conduct early-stage bioinformatics and genomics research, as well as collaborate with Chinese universities.

New Chinese R&D facilities were also announced by Avon (see table), Eurofins and Sensient Technologies. In January, contract lab firm Eurofins opened a consumer products testing lab in Shanghai. Sensient, a color, flavor and fragrance manufacturer, opened a 62,000-square-foot site in Guangzhou, which includes a lab building that houses R&D for flavor creation, pharmaceuticals and color, as well as quality control facilities.

New Laboratories

Academia

Organization: Weill Cornell Medical College Medical Research Building, Cornell University

Location: Cornell, NY

Details: The 18-story, 476-square-foot building will include 13 floors of lab space with an average of 10 research teams per floor, according to The Cornell Daily Sun. It will house interdisciplinary research by the College’s Ithaca and New York campuses, and will be the home of the Weill Cornell Cancer Center.

Timeline: Approved by College trustees in January. Scheduled to be completed in July 2013.

Organization: Papdakis Integrated Science Building, Drexel University

Location: Philadelphia, PA

Details: The $70 million, five-story, 130,000-square-foot facility will house 39 research and teaching labs for bio-medical engineering, biology and chemistry. Ground broken in November 2009.

Timeline: Scheduled to be completed in 2012.

Organization: Neurosciences Laboratory and Clinical Research Building, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)

Location: San Francisco, CA

Details: The $200 million, five-story, 237,000-square-foot building will house 100 principal investigators and over 500 researchers and staff for the UCSF Department of Neurology, the Institute of Neurodegenerative Diseases and the WM Keck Foundation Center for Integrative Neuroscience.

Timeline: Scheduled to be completed in spring 2012.

Agricultural Biotech

Organization: R&D Building, Dow AgroSciences

Location: Indianapolis, IN

Details: The first phase of the expansion plan for Dow AgroSciences headquarters includes a 175,000-square-foot R&D building. The company’s five-year $340 million expansion of its global headquarters is expected to create 577 new jobs.

Timeline: Scheduled to open in early 2012.

Organization: Expansion of Genetics Research Facilities, DuPont Pioneer Hi-Bred

Location: Johnston, IA

Details: The $40 million, 200,000-square-foot, three-building facility will include offices and labs for at least 400 new research personnel. Construction to begin in September.

Timeline: Occupancy scheduled for December 2011 or early 2012.

Consumer Products

Organization: Regional R&D Center, Avon Products

Location: Shanghai, China

Details: The six-floor, 40,000-square-foot facility will be Avon’s largest non-US R&D center. It will focus on product development, safety and quality testing, microbiology, chemical engineering and consumer research, and will serve China and the Asia Pacific region.

Timeline: Scheduled to open in late 2010.

Organization: Analytical Services Center, Coca-Cola

Location: Pune, India

Details: The $4 million, 2,000-square-meter (21,527-square-foot) lab provides analytical and technical support to Coca-Cola operations in India, South Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. It is the sixth lab in Coca-Cola’s global network of analytical testing facilities.

Timeline: Inaugurated in February.