Students speak at groundbreaking for new UofL biosafety lab

At 13 months of age, doctors found that Dylan McHale had meningitis, a disease of the central nervous system caused by the bacteria streptococcus pneumoniae.

It took researchers at a biosafety lab 11 days to find an antibiotic to treat the disease.

"If the right antibiotic had not been found, I could have been disabled, deaf or even dead," the Zachary Taylor Elementary School fifth-grader told a crowd assembled April 9 for the groundbreaking of the new Center for Predictive Medicine on the University of Louisville's Shelby Campus.

McHale was one of three students to read an essay he had written after UofL researcher Eugenia Wang, Ph.D., visited their class in March. Wang not only told them about the importance of biosafety research, but also let them conduct their own experiments, said UofL President James Ramsey, Ph.D.

"We're taking the essays written by all of the students in this class, sealing them in a commemorative box and mounting the box into the floor of the lobby of our new center," he said. "Our hope is that the future generation that finds them no longer has to worry about diseases for which there are no cures."

The Center for Predictive Medicine is one of 13 new level-three biosafety labs being built throughout the country with funding from the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Construction began in late April.

Researchers there will study new diseases and look for ways to prevent, control and treat them, Ramsey said.