Rush University Medical Center, which is in the early stages of a planned renovation and expansion, has confirmed what will be in the first stage of construction for the West Side medical campus.
Rush said it will build a $37 million emergency preparedness center on vacant land just east of Rush’s Atrium building at 1650 W. Congress Pkwy.
Although Rush officials have not ironed out financing for the entire medical campus renovation, they have secured $7.5 million from the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation for the emergency preparedness center, which will be named McCormick Tribune Center for Advanced Emergency Response.
The emergency preparedness center is “central to the first phase of the construction program,” said John Pontarelli, Rush spokesman. “The major components are a few years out.”
No timeline has been established for beginning construction, primarily because the project is so massive, with costs for the total renovation likely to hit $550 million during the next 10 years, Rush executives said.
“We’re going to use money from operations, private philanthropy, grants and debt financing to fund the whole project,” Pontarelli said.
The proposed new emergency preparedness center, which will encompass up to 50,000 square feet, will include 46 observation and examination rooms.
“This center will not only better serve our fast growing community west of Chicago’s Loop, but also will help people from the larger Chicago area through the center’s surveillance and mass treatment capabilities,” said Dr. Larry Goodman, chief executive of Rush.
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Shared knowledge: Lake Forest biotech company NeoPharm Inc. said it will provide some of its lab research expertise to another company in a deal expected to generate $500,000 in the next six months.
Although not a large sum to most companies, the $500,000 is desperately needed money for NeoPharm, which is trying to preserve cash and speed development of its most promising product, an experimental brain cancer drug.
NeoPharm said it will provide an undisclosed privately held biotech company with “customized NeoPhectin formulations,” a proprietary expertise research laboratories can use to transfer genetic material into a cell.
“We’re going to take (the other company’s) cancer drug and we are going to incorporate it into our NeoPhectin delivery system and then they are going to take it into the clinic,” said NeoPharm Chief Executive Greg Young.
“We believe NeoPhectin technology has many applications, both in research and in the clinic. (This deal) shows that there are other people out there who believe in our technology.”
NeoPharm said it has been making progress on reducing costs to give the company enough money to operate through the third quarter of 2006, when final clinical trials for a brain tumor shrinking drug, known as IL 13-PE38QQR, will have been well under way. By then, analysts believe it will be easier for NeoPharm to raise money in the equity markets.
Earlier this week, NeoPharm pleased investors with news that its projected net loss for the fiscal year ending Dec. 31, 2005 wouldn’t be as much as anticipated, $38 million to $42 million, down from the original projection of $42 million to $46 million, Young said.
The improvement has helped boost NeoPharm’s share price, which has tripled in value from the 52-week low hit Aug. 24 of $4.66 a share. The stock’s price, hovering around $12 a share recently, is still well off its 52-week high of $22.70, reached in mid-March.
On Wednesday, shares of NeoPharm rose 13 cents to $12.78 on the Nasdaq.