Robert H. Lurie Medical Research Center

In April 2005 the new 12-story Robert H. Lurie Medical Research Center of Northwestern University was completed. At a cost of $200 million, the center contains approximately 185,000 square feet of research space for laboratories in the fields of cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, human genetics, neurosciences, spinal injury and liver transplantation. The new center will accommodate approximately 1000 researchers, technicians, postdoctoral students, lab assistants and staff. Along with the renovation of 30,000 square feet in the McGaw Pavilion, research space has increased by 75% for the Feinberg School of Medicine. In 2006, the State of Illinois gave Northwestern University $3.5 million for stem cell research. Most of the money went to Mary J.C. Hendrix, PhD for studies of human stem cells to determine their potential to reverse the progression of malignant tumors, muscular dystrophy, Parkinson's disease, brain injury, and epilepsy.

On November 17, 2003 the Mary Beth Donnelley Clinical Pharmacology Center of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center was formally dedicated.  The Richard Donnelley family donated over a half-million dollars to the Northwestern Memorial Foundation in memory of Mary Beth Donnelley to establish the Center located in the Department's research area on the 13th floor of the Ward building.

Michael Avram, PhD was named the director of the facility with Tom Krejcie, MD the associate director.  Technical support for the facility will be provided by Lynn Luong, BS and Kiril Raikoff, MS.  The facility includes a state-of-the-art liquid chromatography system connected to a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer enabling us to detect less than nanogram quantities of drugs used in cancer chemotherapy and cancer-related pain therapy.