Arizona’s bioscience and health care industry is fostering cutting-edge research and innovation in neuroscience exploration.
One need only look at the life-changing work being done at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and the International Genomics Consortium, Phoenix’s Biomedical Campus and Phoenix Children’s Hospital, among other facilities, hospitals and universities.
Now rural Arizona is getting in the game, combining caregiving and brain research under one roof in Yuma, Arizona.
The Veterans Neurological Research Center will be a research and care facility for people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury and other brain-related illnesses.
Conceptul Architectural Rendering
Source: VRNC
An innovative aspect of the facility includes its research component, which will focus on younger military veterans who have returned from deployment to study changes occurring in their brains. Researchers hope the results will aid them in treating elderly patients who have been diagnosed with brain diseases. The facility will have 150 “extended stay units” for families dealing with traumatic brain injury.
The Yuma Sun this week detailed the plans for the facility.
Arizona is a leader in understanding and treatment of traumatic brain injury and brain diseases. The Alzheimer’s Association says more than five million Americans are living with the disease.
Interior Concept Architectural Rendering
Source: VNRC
The Veterans Neurological Research Center is in the design phase now and will take over a vacant Kmart building in Yuma. The facility will occupy more than 200,000 square feet and will employ more than 400 people when fully staffed. Those jobs will include physicians, nurses, lab workers, researchers, and a variety of support staff.
Those jobs will be added to a thriving bioscience and health care industry in Arizona. The state added 36,700 bioscience jobs between 2002 and 2014, a 49 percent increase. That brings the total employment of bioscience and hospital jobs in Arizona to 110,410, according to the most recent Flinn Foundation data.
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