Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder and CU-Health Sciences Center have been awarded a $6.5 million grant to bring to Colorado the largest nuclear magnetic resonance magnet available in the world today.
The magnet, which weighs nearly 8 tons and is a story and a half tall, will be housed in a specially designed building on the new Fitzsimons campus of the CU-Health Sciences Center. The giant magnet is wound from several miles of niobium-tin superconducting wire and is almost half a million times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field. It will be the only magnet of its type in the Rocky Mountain region and will be used for biomedical research.
The grant was awarded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the National Institutes of Health.
"Researchers who will use the Rocky Mountain Regional Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Center are studying some of the molecules that biomedical researchers find most tantalizing, such as very large complexes of proteins and proteins with nucleic acids that control normal cell behavior and influence diseases such as cancer and AIDS," said Janna Wehrle, Ph.D, program director at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. "To study these challenging complexes requires the world's most advanced nuclear magnetic resonance instrumentation. We are awarding this grant for the 900 megahertz instrument to boost their ability to meet this challenge."
CU-Boulder Associate Professor Deborah Wuttke and CU-Boulder Professor Arthur Pardi, both of the chemistry and biochemistry department, are the project leaders for the grant. Assistant professor of pharmacology David Jones at the CU-Health Sciences Center will co-direct the facility.
"Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy is a tool used to solve the structures of both simple and complex molecules," Wuttke said. "This technique is the molecular parallel of magnetic resonance imaging which provides three-dimensional images of the body. The 900 megahertz nuclear magnetic resonance magnet will be used to determine the 3-dimensional structures of proteins, DNA and RNA by first determining how individual atoms are connected and then how these polymers twist and turn to fold into well-defined structures."
Learning more about these structures is essential for understanding the molecular basis of all biological function and the changes that lead to disease, and is a critical area of biomedical research, she said.
While researchers at CU-Boulder and the CU-Health Sciences Center already use several smaller magnets for research, the giant magnet will allow researchers to gain more accurate glimpses of how molecules work, the researchers said.
"The information obtained can be used to design new therapeutics as well as understand the underlying mechanisms of life," Pardi said. "Researchers who will use this instrumentation will be addressing a variety of biomedical problems, including those involved in cancer, HIV, antiviral activity, effects of environmental estrogens, immune deficiency, birth defects and alcohol sensitivity."
Approximately $5 million of the grant will be used to purchase the nuclear magnetic resonance magnet, which will take about two years to make and deliver. The remainder of the five-year grant will be used to operate and maintain the facility.
"Planning for this magnet began four years ago before these magnets even existed," said Dr. E. Chester Ridgway, senior associate dean for academic affairs at the CU School of Medicine. "The development of the Fitzsimons campus included this magnet as an integral part of the infrastructure, and this machine will be the cornerstone for development of the premier nuclear magnetic resonance center in the Rocky Mountain region."
CU joins five other institutions chosen by the NIH's National Institute of General Medical Sciences to establish six regional centers for state-of-the-art nuclear magnetic resonance facilities for biomedical research. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York Structural Biology Center, University of Georgia at Athens and University of Wisconsin at Madison received grants in 2002. The University of California at Berkeley was awarded a grant in addition to CU this year.
The regional facility will serve institutions including the University of Utah School of Medicine, Texas A&M and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.