With the paint barely dried on its third research expansion in 10 years, Children's Hospital Medical Center is planning to pump at least $50 million more into yet another research wing.

        Hospital officials have begun planning for a 250,000-square-foot research center that would be built by 2006.

        The building could be erected on the site of the hospital's existing clinical building, which is to be replaced next year by a new patient-care tower under construction at Burnet and Erkenbrecher avenues.

        The construction plans reflect continuing dramatic growth in medical research at Children's Hospital, which last year climbed from fourth to third among pediatric centers nationwide in funding from the National Institutes of Health.

        As a result, children from Greater Cincinnati and the Midwest, even some who travel here from other countries, could benefit from improved treatments for leukemia, juvenile arthritis, lung disease, kidney disease, birth defects and from vaccines for a variety of infectious diseases.

        “We have added a lot of space recently. But almost all of it is already allocated,” said Dr. Thomas Boat, director of the Children's Hospital Research Foundation. “And we will grow over the next five years.”

        In 2000, Children's Hospital received about $35 million in NIH grants. That's up from $8 million in 1993. Only the children's hospitals of Boston ($52.9 million) and Philadelphia ($46.9 million) won more grants from the NIH in 2000.

        Counting all public and private grants, the Children's Hospital research budget jumped 30 percent this year from 2000 and is expected to climb an additional 25 percent next year to $80 million.

        The research work at Children's Hospital already includes about 1,900 workers. Even before building a new research tower, the hospital expects that employment figure to grow by about 600 in the next two years, Dr. Boat said.

        Among the new scientists coming to Cincinnati: Dr. David Williams, a blood disease expert from Indiana University who was recently recruited to head the hospital's experimental hematology division and a translational research institute that seeks to speed the process of turning lab discoveries into treatments.

        Dr. Williams' team is expected to improve expertise on leukemia, sickle cell anemia and other blood diseases. Dr. Boat predicted that new research leaders in nephrology (kidney disease), pulmonology (lung disease) and infectious disease also will bring increased research staffs in the next few years.

        The Children's Hospital campus has been a nonstop construction zone for several years, with crews working on more than $160 million in projects. Making room for still more researchers might require another round of reshuffling.

        Some researchers in the existing research tower who primarily work with computers rather than chemicals might be moved off-campus to make room for researchers who need “wet” lab space. And once the new clinical tower opens next year, the hospital's old clinical tower will be empty.

        Trustees are debating whether to tear down the old hospital to add research space, or to renovate the building for other uses and put the planned research tower somewhere else on campus.

        “A lot of this is still in the talking phases,” Dr. Boat said. “The soonest a new building could be up and occupied would be 2006.”

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