The hallway on the fifth floor merging together MU School of Medicine and University Hospital is not your average hallway. It’s the new clinical research center, a five million dollar multi-stage renovation project, giving scientists, doctors and patients a place to discover new treatment. Researchers involved say the center is the only one of its kind in central Missouri where science and research come together. Researcher William Steinmann is a professor of science and the director of clinical research at MU. He says the center will bring MU new methods for treating, preventing and managing disease.
“This unit is going to allow us to faith that we can show individuals who our potential funders that we can belly up to the bar. So you can literally have our investigators walk across the hall and meet our patients. So it’s really exciting because a lot of times these research centers are not on campus and the idea that I can bring my patients to the forefront of discovery of evidence that is going to prove their practices is exhilarating," Steinmann says.
The center will be the site for several new clinical trials and include five inpatient beds, three outpatient examination rooms, a metabolic kitchen for nutritional studies and an exercise facility. Steinmann says the center is partnering with government agencies like the National Institute of Health which will make MU research more competitive for grants and contracts.