Illumination | Spring 2009

Architectural simplicity belies a complex safety and scientific infrastructure.

For economic-development types who track domestic employment impacts from projects like the RBL, the boilers, heat boxes, gauges, and other brand new building systems should be a comforting sight. To Bland, they mostly represent new challenges in the high-security, ultra-clean laboratory environment. “NIH hosted a week-long facility engineering course so that we would know exactly what to expect and how to operate in this setting,” he says.

Knowing lab employees receive specialized training comforts Columbia city councilman Karl Skala, who recently retired from the Swine Research Center as a physiologist and laboratory manager. “You can have all the redundant systems in the world, but you have to address the potential for human error,” said Skala, who recently toured the RBL. “What I saw impressed me, and I’m glad the extra precautions are in place.”

Dangerous, But Curable

HIV— the Human Immunodeficiency Virus — causes AIDS in monkeys and humans, but it’s not on RBL’s pathogen study list because it’s incurable, at least presently, a key distinction in the security hierarchy of the nation’s biocontainment facilities. “We’re a Level 3 lab, which means we only deal with pathogens and diseases that have known cures,” Stewart says.

The distinction also explains why there hasn’t been much hoopla surrounding RBL. In 2006, some Columbia residents protested a proposed biocontainment laboratory designed to replace the Animal Disease Center in Plum Island, N.Y. That lab was a Level 4 homeland security operation, Stewart explains. “And Level 4 labs only deal with diseases and germs for which there is no cure, like Ebola .”

The RBL is different. “We’re currently NIH-funded and operated by the University,” Stewart says. “We have little to do with Homeland Security.”

Terri Rebmann, who last year placed a student intern at the U. S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, a Level 4 lab, says she’s glad the RBL is so close to St. Louis. As chair of the emergency preparedness committee of the Association of Professionals in Infection Control, Rebmann says, “my focus is on disaster preparedness for hospitals, health departments, and other emergency responders. So having a lab of this caliber nearby for possible collaborations is nothing short of wonderful.”

The RBL is a non-descript building at the end of a short gravel drive. It’s hard to imagine that such an architecturally unassuming structure will shortly become home to some of the world’s most impressive engines of innovation. From a distance, in fact, the laboratory looks almost like a simple Amish barn. To Stewart, that’s all part of what makes it a unique research environment.

“I’ve always liked the architecture, even on sketches and drawings,” he says. “It’s very down to earth and very real.”

Published by the Office of Research.