SRI International completes expansion in Harrisonburg

SRI International has completed the expansion of a 40,000-square-foot research and development facility in Harrisonburg. SRI funded the $2.8 million buildout to advance its bioscience research capabilities at SRI's Shenandoah Valley Center for Advanced Drug Research.

SRI also has renewed its five-year lease in the Innovation Village at Rockingham, a 325-acre development in Rockingham County.

The new biomedical facilities include more than 2,500 square feet of laboratory and storage areas for preclinical research, drug discovery, and drug development programs. R&D at SRI Shenandoah Valley focuses on basic research, including emerging infectious diseases, metabolic diseases, and proteomics; therapeutic discovery and development of drugs, vaccines and biologics; and personalized medicine.

As part of SRI’s growth, it has hired three new people: Thomas Voss, director of virology, Center for Immunology and Infectious Diseases; Tianyi “Tony” Wang, a senior scientist in virology at the center; and Lynn Chellarajan, laboratory supervisor.

“In 2007, a small number of SRI colleagues and I first began working in a laboratory on the campus of James Madison University, which marked the founding of our Center for Advanced Drug Research in Shenandoah Valley. Since then, due in large part to the support of the Commonwealth of Virginia and other regional partners, we have grown and established a state-of-the art facility tackling the challenges of drug discovery and development for critical and emerging diseases,” Krishna Kodukula, the center’s executive director, said in a statement.