Credit: J. DYKEHOUSE

The Van Andel Institute, a non-profit biomedical research and educational organization in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has just opened a $178-million expansion — eight storeys of new lab space that will be fully operational by March 2010. In the next decade, as the institute expands from cancer research to translational medicine, administrators expect to add more than 20 principal-investigator posts, creating some 550 research and support-staff positions. Neurodegenerative disease, bone research, structural biology and pharmacogenomics are among the areas to be targeted.