Sens. Marshall, Moran Announce $3.4 Million for KSU to Build Core Lab Facility

(Washington, D.C. September 30, 2021) – U.S. Senators Roger Marshall, M.D. and Jerry Moran announced that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded Kansas State University (KSU) over $3.4 million to become a national leader in advancing the discovery and development of biosecurity strategies for emerging infectious diseases that threaten public health. 

“Manhattan, Kansas and my alma mater Kanas State University are home to some of the most cutting-edge biological and infectious disease research, and this grant will coordinate their efforts to multiply their successes,” said Senator Marshall. “The whole world is painfully aware of how dangerous infectious diseases can be as we continue to live through the COVID-19 pandemic. This collaborative research is monumental to understanding, preventing, and combatting any biological threats to our animal populations and public health.”

“Kansas State is well-known for being a premier research institution within the animal health corridor,” said Senator Moran. “This federal grant will serve to strengthen our nation’s biomedical research infrastructure in the wake of the pandemic and support critical animal health research being conducted by K-State professors and students. As an appropriator for the NIH, I supported resources for the construction of biomedical research facilities, and I will continue to work with our federal agencies to make certain that Kansas is a priority when these resources are distributed.”

“We seized an opportunity to strengthen our research capacity and infrastructure by creating an integrated technology pipeline in this new space,” said Bonnie Rush, DVM, Dean of KSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine. “This will give our university a modern biomedical research facility with advanced instrumentation and technical support to foster collaborative, transdisciplinary science across the university and beyond. This is critical to promoting robust research and training environment where researchers can answer challenging and urgent biomedical questions of our time.”

Background:

The grant, funded by the National Institutes of Health, aims to build up KSU’s laboratory capacity to become a premier institution in advancing the discovery and development of biosecurity strategies for emerging and zoonotic infectious diseases. Specifically, the grant leverages three laboratories in Manhattan, Kansas:

• The KSU Biosecurity Research Institute is home to comprehensive infectious disease research and is committed to training the next generation of scientists studying recurring and emerging infectious diseases.
• The USDA’s National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) is America’s leading biocontainment laboratory studying diseases that threaten animal agricultural industry and public health.
• The USDA’s Arthropod-Borne Animal Diseases Research Unit enables researchers to work on the diagnosis and control of livestock diseases that are transmitted by arthropods including insects, ticks, spiders, and more.

According to Kansas State University, existing laboratories are isolated from each other which have limited access, research productivity, and collaboration between the many faculty members affiliated with one or more sites. In addition, the existing facilities for key technologies in lab research are inadequate in size, location, function, and flexibility. The grant will enable KSU to renovate its current infrastructure and establish a core research facility to bridge the gaps. The core facility will support infectious disease studies and provide direct support to the university’s Centers for Biomedical Research Excellence and the facilities, per above. In addition, the core facility will strategically combine five key disciplines: animal model/pathology, molecular and cellular biology, microscopic imaging, flow cytometry and cell sorting, and next-generation sequencing. In total, KSU received $3,430,993 for the construction project and will run through 2026.

Federal funding for this award was made possible by the bipartisan Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021.

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