Medical Center Celebrates Opening of Kornberg Building and Aab Biomedical Institute

On hand to join in the festivities were the building's namesake, Nobel Prize winner Arthur Kornberg '41M (MD); members of the family for whom the Aab Institute is named; and, among other celebrants, three of Kornberg's fellow Nobelists.

The glass-enclosed, 240,000 square-foot building is the centerpiece of a 10-year, $400 million plan to dramatically expand the Medical Center's research programs in the basic sciences.

The Aab Institute it houses encompasses six interdisciplinary research centers: in aging and developmental biology; cancer biology; cardiovascular research; human genetics and molecular pediatric diseases; oral biology; and vaccine biology and immunology. Some 70 medical scientists and 400 technicians and support personnel are being recruited to help make each center a premier site in the country for research. The expansion represents the University's biggest recruitment effort since the School of Medicine and Dentistry was founded in 1924.

One of the largest private gifts in the history of the Medical Center--a $5 million gift from the family of Rochester entrepreneur Richard T. Aab--will help to establish the institute. Aab is co-founder of ACC Corp., a publicly owned telecommunications company in Rochester that last year was acquired by a subsidiary of AT&T.

In each of the institute's research centers, scientists will be engaged in a two-part research strategy. First, they will study the workings of the human body at the most basic level--that of molecules and genes--to learn how the
body's normal function is sabotaged by diseases such as cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, and AIDS.

Then, with a clearer understanding of the mechanisms by which diseases attack the body, the scientists will attempt to devise new approaches for treatment--or to prevent these diseases from striking altogether.

The Medical Center is attracting some of the nation's top physicians and scientists to staff the new research institute.

"We're building on an outstanding core of talent that already exists here," says Medical Center CEO Jay Stein. "The result will be a world-class powerhouse of medical expertise here in Rochester."

"New treatments for disease are what draw patients to the nation's top medical centers," Stein adds. "Many hospitals provide excellent medical care. But the medical centers that are ranked as the nation's best--such as Johns Hopkins and Harvard--are the ones that have solid research programs that find new and better ways to fight disease.

"The development of our research institute moves the University of Rochester a step closer toward a place among those medical centers."

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