Construction begins on Neuroscience Research Facility addition Construction has begun on a $1 million addition to the Neuroscience Research Facility at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences. The new building will add 2,200 square feet of laboratory space to the research facility at Hamline and Fifth Avenue North, just west of the medical school on the UND campus. When the addition is completed, the entire Neuroscience Research Facility will include 17,000 square feet of space. Funding for the structure came from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which provided the initial $3 million for the original building three years ago. "This addition to the Neuroscience Research Facility represents another step forward for the School of Medicine and Health Sciences in its effort to increase our understanding of the diseases of the brain," said Dean H. David Wilson. "We are very proud of the important work of our faculty to find better treatments for neurodegenerative diseases which have a devastating effect on people everywhere." "This is very exciting," said Jonathan Geiger, professor and chair of Pharmacology, Physiology and Therapeutics. "It's good to have a building that is dedicated thematically to a particular aspect of human disease. By clustering some of our researchers together in one space, we can more easily share new ideas and promising avenues of study." The Neuroscience Research Facility, dedicated in 2004, consists of 14,000 square feet, with eight laboratories and shared research space where medical faculty members are seeking to understand how the brain functions at its most basic level and the underlying biomedical causes of diseases which originate in the brain, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, HIV-associated dementia, epilepsy and multiple sclerosis, among others. They are also working to uncover scientific knowledge of the mechanisms in the brain which lead to drug-seeking behavior. With that insight, treatments could be developed to interrupt the process that causes addiction and therefore reduce or eliminate the desire for illicit drugs. The addition is expected to be completed by December and should be ready for occupancy in early 2007. It includes two laboratories, two offices and two common rooms for tissue preparation and microscopy. Faculty members who will occupy the new laboratory space are Rugao Liu, associate professor, and John Watt, assistant professor, both of the Anatomy and Cell Biology, Geiger said. Along with Geiger, other faculty members who are conducting investigations in the Neuroscience Research Facility are: Colin Combs, Matthew Picklo, Othman Ghribi and Saobo Lei, all assistant professors in the Pharmacology, Physiology and Therapeutics.