KU’s ‘big magnet’ expected to attract top researchers

Biology center takes basic science to new level

They call it “the big magnet.”

Technically, it’s a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer, a new addition to Kansas University. It has 60 miles of electrical wiring and creates a magnetic force 200,000 times stronger than earth’s gravitational pull.

And Roberto De Guzman can’t work without it.

“If another university would have made an offer and KU didn’t have this, I would have gone there,” said De Guzman, who starts as a professor of molecular biosciences in December.

Without the magnet, De Guzman said, he would be “like a race car driver without a race car.”

KU officials say the $1.9 million magnet — combined with other equipment in the Structural Biology Center, set for dedication Friday on west campus — will give researchers unique tools for understanding the basic science behind processes such as the cause of cancer. It also will give the university a tool for hiring researchers such as De Guzman, who is finishing his postdoctoral fellowship at the prestigious Scripps Research Foundation in San Diego.

“I think we have a facility that’s unique,” said David VanderVelde, director of the NMR lab. “We’re trying to make a one-stop shop for everything you’d want.”

The 800-MHz spectrometer is the centerpiece of the building, which is designed to help researchers understand proteins, how they interact with other materials in the human body and how those interactions can lead to drug development.

The building, which cost $10.2 million to build and equip, was paid for with $5 million in bonds authorized by the Kansas Legislature in 2003, with the remainder coming from the KU Center for Research.

The centerpiece of the new Structural Biology Center on Kansas University's west campus will be an 800 MHz nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer. David VanderVelde, director of laboratories, pictured near the high-powered magnet Tuesday, says only about 25 universities have a magnet of this strength.

Phase I of the building, which is 11,500 square feet, will be dedicated Friday. Phase II, which houses another 5,500 square feet in labs, will be completed in December.

KU has submitted a grant proposal to the National Institutes of Health that would add another 20,000 square feet to the building, if approved.

VanderVelde said only about 25 universities had an 800 Mhz spectrometer, one of the strongest on the market. The magnet, along with X-ray crystallography equipment housed at the center, allows researchers to get a 3-D map of proteins.

When those two devices are combined with other equipment dedicated to proteomics — the study of proteins — VanderVelde said he didn’t know of another university with all the resources to match.

That was what attracted De Guzman to KU.

The Structural Biology Center at Kansas University will be dedicated during a ceremony at 10:45 a.m. Friday.The ceremony will take place at the center, which is west of the Simons Biosciences Research Laboratories on west campus.Free parking is available at the Lied Center, with shuttle buses available to the dedication site. In case of inclement weather, the dedication will be at the Dole Institute of Politics.

His research focuses on proteins that have been implicated in cancer. Understanding how the proteins work at an atomic level may shed light on what causes cancer.

He said his basic research could then be handed off to pharmaceutical chemists, who could develop drugs to fight cancer.

“I think science is now very interdisciplinary,” De Guzman said. “You can’t exist by a single group alone. What’s the old cliche? It will be greater than the sum of its parts.”

He said initial success in the Structural Biology Center labs should attract even more researchers to KU.

KU will dedicate its new .4 million, 11,500-square-foot Structural Biology Center on Friday. The research facility is on west campus.

“The idea is to show to the NMR community that KU is capable of playing Division One,” he said. “We have the talent and resources to do that.”

Explaining how that basic science affects human health may be difficult, VanderVelde said.

“Everybody from my parents to the construction workers wonders how it works,” he said. “The chancellor made it clear he wanted a nontechnical presentation, that the dedication was a nonscientific event. We’re all scratching our heads.”

The design of the building should help with that, VanderVelde said. The area around the large magnet is surrounded by glass, allowing easy viewing of activities inside.

“They tried to build the whole thing to show it off, with all the glass,” he said. “It turned out great. I love what the architects did in designing it.”