FACILITIES

Our newly constructed laboratories in the new Victoria Research Laboratory Tower of London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) were opened in September 2004 and are located at the same site as the Children’s Hospital of Western Ontario. The fifth floor (10,000 square feet) and half the fourth floor (5,000 square feet) house the administrative offices and laboratories for 15 Scientists of our three biomedical research programs. This facility provides wet-bench laboratories and is constructed in a modern “open lab” concept . In addition, this facility provides our researchers with access to state-of-the-art animal facilities for small animals and the London Regional Transgenic and Gene Targeting Core Facility which occupy the seventh floor (10,000 square feet).

In 1998, the Hospital Restructuring Commission of the Ministry of Health of Ontario recommended consolidation of acute care specialty services for children and women’s’ health at the Victoria Campus of London Health Sciences Centre. The result is a new 40,000 square-foot building to house children’s and women’s health care. The new Children’s Hospital of Western Ontario will be located in the same building as the Grace Donnelly Women’s Health Pavilion providing constant closeness of mother and child in cases such as complicated births. The proximity to Children’s Hospital provides our researchers greater opportunity for bench-to-bedside learning. Children’s Hospital is also a major centre for medical research and serves as a teaching hospital for physicians, nurses and other health professionals. Children’s Hospital serves as the regional referral centre providing specialized paediatric services to children from birth to age 17 in southwestern Ontario.

Close proximity to children’s and women’s health care creates unique collaborative opportunities for our basic scientists and clinical researchers to translate knowledge acquired at a basic science level in the lab into better and new treatments or prevention of children’s diseases and injuries. The ability to bridge discoveries from the bench to the bedside directly impacts the health of children in our community.