The University of Missouri recently celebrated the grand opening of the Roy Blunt NextGen Precision Health building on our flagship Columbia campus. The NextGen Precision Health Initiative is the university’s number one strategic priority, and this building embeds the most ambitious research spurt in our 182-year history. The opening was a great success, attended by university directors, elected representatives and even Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, attended.
The overwhelming support of national science leaders shows how important NextGen is to our country now and in the future. It is a groundbreaking research center that, while located in Columbia, has connections within and through all parts of Missouri and the Midwest. This is a science that will save your life.
There are so many reasons to get excited about NextGen, but I want to outline two important ways this building, and our new investment and approach to research and student success known as MizzouForward, will affect all Missourians.
NextGen is there for everyone
NextGen researchers are tasked with addressing some of Missouri’s most pressing health care challenges, including cancer, neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s, heart disease and diabetes. NextGen’s discoveries will accelerate life-saving advances and help more people live longer, healthier lives.
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For example, one of the research teams is a group looking into the high rate of substance use disorder in Missouri. An estimated 377,000 Missouri residents had a drug use disorder in 2018-19, according to the latest National Drug Use and Health Survey. That’s an amazing number of our neighbors struggling to break the addiction cycles.
To meet this ongoing challenge, Dr. Brett Froeliger, professor and director of the NextGen Cognitive Neuroscience Systems core facility, and his addiction treatment team are using NextGen to develop better ways to combat substance use disorders. With advanced imaging technology, they want to understand the physiology of addiction and provide more opportunities for recovery. Some of the imaging technologies available to the research teams, including the MAGNETOM Terra 7 Tesla MRI from Siemens Healthineers, cannot be found anywhere else in Missouri.
NextGen’s goal is to accelerate discoveries like those made by Dr. Carolyn Anderson and Dr. J. David Robertson for doing radiopharmaceutical laboratory research at the MU Research Reactor – bringing more clinical treatments and hope to more people in Missouri and beyond. Each week, 14,500 doses of critical radiopharmaceutical agents for cancer drugs are dispatched from the reactor and delivered to hospitals across the Western Hemisphere. In order to further accelerate the process of developing new radiopharmaceuticals, NextGen has designated clean rooms for production. Our researchers consider all parts of the innovation process – from initial discovery to large-scale dissemination.
The Economic Impact of Precision Health
Saving lives in Missouri and beyond is our number one priority. To make such advances, we have forged key partnerships with industry leaders such as Siemens Healthineers and Thermo Fisher Scientific. These partnerships give us access to tools that drive innovation and attract top talent who would like to use our facility for their own research.
The result is a facility that not only attracts world-class researchers, but also becomes a hub of biomedical innovation for the Midwest and the country. An economic impact report estimates NextGen could add $ 5.6 billion to the state’s economy over the next 25 years. You can expect more jobs in high-demand industries and even more industrial partners drawn to Missouri ready to invest in our ongoing research excellence.
What’s next
NextGen is also a central part of our recently announced MizzouForward initiative, which will use existing and new resources to recruit approximately 150 new faculty for permanent and permanent positions, increase staff to support our research mission, and build and modernize research facilities and tools to expand the support for the academic success of the students and the retention of teachers and staff through additional salary support. MizzouForward will represent an investment of approximately $ 1.5 billion in our research and education missions, and in the health and future of our state, over the next decade.
Now that the Roy Blunt NextGen Precision Health building has opened and our first wave of researchers has moved in, the critical elements are in place to transform the work of our universities and the wellbeing of so many in Missouri.
Sooner than you imagine, NextGen will make a difference in your life too.
Mun Y. Choi, Ph.D., is President of the University of Missouri.
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