It's been years in the making, but the Paradise Valley Community College new Life Sciences building is ready for its close up. The fall semester starts Saturday but you can get a sneak peak of the new building during a ribbon cutting and tour grand opening from 9 to 11 a.m. Thursday. The building's 35,000-plus square feet gives breathing room to the science departments on campus. Space was tight when all the sciences (chemistry, astronomy, biology and others) had to share space. The new building will contain only the biological sciences such as anatomy, physiology and microbiology.

The Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation said it is on track to complete construction next year of a $125 million, 186,000-square-foot research center designed to fulfill its longstanding goal of bringing under one roof research efforts now scattered among several buildings.

The National Institutes of Health has awarded the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Center for AIDS Research a five-year, $7.5 million grant "to continue researching, preventing and treating HIV, the medical center announced Tuesday," the Birmingham News reports.

The Texas A&M Institute for Genomic Medicine (TIGM) – a joint research institute of the Texas A&M Health Science Center and Texas A&M University – is a co-recipient of a $3.2 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency and its Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program. The primary objective of the grant is to study current human health risk from chemical exposures. TIGM will receive $750,000 over three years in collaboration with the University of Houston and Indiana University through a new entity called the Texas-Indiana Virtual STAR (TIVS) Center.

Hawaii Biotech, Inc. was awarded a three-year $2.9 million SBIR phase II grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease to continue development of a vaccine to protect healthy individuals from Tick-Borne Encephalitis. This brings Hawaii Biotech's current product array to three, including vaccine candidates for dengue virus, West Nile virus and Tick-Borne Encephalitis.

New Orleans, LA Dr. Eric Lazartigues, Assistant Professor of Pharmacology at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans School of Medicine, has been awarded a $1.2 million Research Project (RO1) grant by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health. The 5-year grant will support his research to advance our understanding of the role of the brain in regulating blood pressure and the development of hypertension. Dr. Lazartigues' research could pave the way for the development of new treatments for cardiovascular disease America's #1 killer.

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) and the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) agreed to work together to advance diabetes drug R&D. The initial focus will be on pancreatic beta-cell regeneration and survival to restore beta-cell function in diabetes.