Strategic Collaboration: Lab Design

Collaborative design principles have come to fruition in the Children’s Mercy Research Institute (CMRI) lab spaces in Kansas City, Missouri. With clinical pharmacology and genomics as its two areas of emphasis, the lab spaces within CMRI are woven into the fabric of the facility’s overall design to maximize collaboration between these pediatric research specialties and to fulfill the hospital’s goal towards creating the translational research program and spaces.

BSA LifeStructures met with researchers and directors from the project’s inception onward to understand and manifest their need for a fluent, cohesive building layout to enable efficient, effective collaboration.

Children’s Mercy Research Institute offers the largest and most comprehensive pediatric clinical pharmacology program in North America. Floors three, four, and seven are comprised solely of wet lab space and additional specialty spaces, e.g., cGMP, BSL 3, mass spec rooms. Clinical pharmacology and genomics are two specialties that are strategically co-located on the third floor to maximize collaboration and to develop right-size treatments for specific genome mutations in children. Wet benching and a mass spectrometer space that analyzes complex samples with sensitivity, selectivity, and speed are found here. In the genomics spaces, researchers are isolating DNA, examining tissue culture, and sequencing DNA to uncover mutations, diagnose diseases, and working in tandem with clinical pharmacologists to create treatments that are personalized to the patient.