Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) and the Long Island Regional Economic Development Council (LIREDC) have, along with state and local officials, broken ground on CSHL’s Preclinical Experimental Therapeutics Facility in Woodbury, Nassau County, NY. CSHL hopes that the new facility will help advance their Cancer Therapeutic Initiative for cancer research by establishing an advanced drug testing facility for cancers including lung, liver, pancreatic, brain, prostate, and breast cancers as well as melanoma and leukemia.
The facility will be located at CSHL’s Woodbury campus and will create 30 new jobs on Long Island.
The project is being propelled by a $2 million award from Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s Regional Council initiative. In Round 1 of the initiative, the LIREDC deemed the Preclinical Experimental Therapeutics Facility transformative and endorsed it as a priority project. As a result, Empire State Development (ESD) awarded CSHL $2 million in performance-based incentives to help establish the facility. ESD’s funding is supporting a portion of the $15 million project.
“This expansion project demonstrates how Long Island is becoming a leading hub for scientific and medical study,” Governor Cuomo said in a statement, “Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is moving forward with a facility that will enable critical research seeking to advance the quality of healthcare around the globe.”
This announcement comes nearly two months after the formal launch of the New York Genome Center (NYGC) in nearby Manhattan. James D. Watson, Ph.D., chancellor emeritus of CSHL, was one of the speakers at the NYGC’s inaugural scientific symposium.