MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia University Hospitals, Inc., has been awarded funding for eight projects at WVU Medicine Children’s, WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute (RNI), and the WVU Health Sciences Center.
U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (Labor-HHS), announced the more than $20 million in Congressionally Directed Spending for the projects from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Wednesday.
“I am excited to see the resources I directly advocated for reach WVU Hospitals and Health Science Center. When I visited the brand new Children’s Hospital this past spring, I saw firsthand the standard of care being offered in the Mountain State, allowing children to stay close to home for medical treatment,” Ranking Member Capito said. “The revolutionary Alzheimer’s and Substance Use Disorder (SUD) research taking place at RNI is already changing lives. Further buildout of their infrastructure will allow for interdisciplinary innovation, spurring new methods of treatment and prevention. From facility renovations to providing genetics testing and cellular analysis to studying visual impairment, I couldn’t be prouder to support WVU Hospitals’ mission of delivering researched-base quality care to West Virginians.”
The funding will be used to expand health care facility space for patients’ treatments, medical research, and administrative areas, renovate labs, and purchase new equipment at WVU Hospitals, Inc.
“We are deeply grateful to Senator Capito for her continued support and advocacy for WVU Medicine and its hospitals, especially, in this instance, our flagship academic medical center in Morgantown, WVU Medicine Children’s, and the WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute,” Albert L. Wright, Jr., president and CEO of the WVU Health System, said. “We’re especially excited to expand our cytogenetics lab, the only such lab in West Virginia, by building a new, more advanced one in the former Mylan/Viatris plant, which is now home to the WVU Innovation Corporation. An expanded cytogenetics lab is especially critical as we pursue National Cancer Institute designation for the WVU Cancer Institute.”
WVU Medicine Children’s will recieve $8.5 million to support the design and buildout of a surgical unit, purchase equipment and improve access to care for stigmatized services.
The Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute will use $5.5 million to construct an Interdisciplinary Innovation Space and the administrative buildout.
The Chestnut Ridge Cytogenetics Laboratory will receive about $5.5 million for a cellular analysis facility and renovations for the first Cytogenetics lab in the state.
The Chestnut Ridge Histology Laboratory will receive $3.5 million for a surgical pathology laboratory.
The WVU Health Science Center Reducing Visual Impairment will use $1.1 million for the the purchase of a mass spectrometer and a transmission electron microscope.
“West Virginians suffer from a high rate of vision loss due to the convergence of several health risk factors prevalent in the state including diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and advanced age,” Ming Lei, PhD, Senior Associate Vice President for Research and Graduate Education, WVU Health Sciences, said. “A team of clinicians and scientists at West Virginia University Health Sciences is conducting cutting-edge research to understand the molecular mechanism underlying visual impairment and develop intervention strategies. The new Mass Spectrometer and Transmission Electron Microscope are two critical instruments that will significantly accelerate the team’s pace of discoveries toward preserving and improving the vision health of our population. These new instruments will also provide advanced technical capacity and will allow clinicians and scientists who conduct research on other diseases at the University to better collaborate.”