Wistar Institute to break ground on new research tower

The Wistar Institute will break ground Friday on a $100 million, glass-front tower to put a new face on the century-old, nonprofit scientific center in West Philadelphia.

The institute's original 1894 building still stands at the corner of 36th and Spruce Streets, surrounded by the University of Pennsylvania, which it was once part of.

The Wistar family landed in Philadelphia before the American Revolution, and the institute is named for Caspar Wistar, a doctor. His great-nephew Isaac founded the institute in 1892 to give scientists a place to work and explore.

The old redbrick building will remain, but a chunk of the cancer center next door, built in 1975, will be removed and a seven-story tower with a glass front facing Spruce will be built to house scientists conducting medically oriented research.

The Wistar Institute is one of only seven National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers devoted solely to research. It has developed several vaccines, among them one from 1969 that eradicated German measles - rubella - in the United States and parts of the world.

The institute received an $18 million grant from Pennsylvania's Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program, and a $35 million fund-raising campaign is under way. Citizens Bank's Healthcare and Not-for-Profit Banking Group provided $55 million in permanent tax-exempt financing and a $15 million swing loan to help Wistar's capital campaign.

Construction is scheduled to be completed in spring 2014. Ballinger is handling architecture and engineering work and L.F. Driscoll, L.L.C. is managing construction. The project will employ about 380 workers.

Russel E. Kaufman, Wistar president and chief executive officer, said he and others had been thinking about and planning the 89,700-square-foot research tower for five years.

"We wanted a research tower to have a big, open space where teams can come together," Kaufman said, adding that offices and labs would be on the outer portion.

"The team might come together for three years for a project," he said. "Maybe one leaves here, but the dynamic takes off in the open space. One thing I found through the years was that you're most likely to publish a paper with the person in the lab next door, regardless of the areas of expertise.

"You're talking, you're finding common areas of interest. You're least likely to publish a paper with someone who is at the other end of the building, up three floors."

Kaufman, a medical doctor, said computer analysis of data was as much a part of biological research today as any other scientific field, so some of the 100 to 150 people he expects to hire will be specialists in it. The institute has 422 employees now.

"Those scientists sitting by themselves in their labs can now only take their work a short distance without saying: 'I need other people. I need a computational biologist. I need someone to sequence these genes. I need someone to analyze these proteins,' " Kaufman said. "Science has become a very interdependent enterprise in what we call team science."

Kaufman, who wore his white lab coat during the interview and who still works in the lab when he can, said he had local and worldwide hopes for Wistar as it expands.

Scientists will collaborate in the new facility, but the Internet will mean more work with colleagues in Asia and Europe. Kaufman also hopes Wistar, Penn, Drexel, the University of the Sciences, and other health-oriented research facilities will help Philadelphia remain - and increase its status as - a hub for high-end research.

"We are on the downside in Philadelphia in the number of entrepreneurs and capital," Kaufman said. "The more each of us becomes successful, the more the capital and the entrepreneurs will say, 'Why don't we move closer?' "