Tissue bank considers facility in Lee County (click here for full post)
This could significantly help those with autism. Click here for the full story: TISSUE BANK
A Southwest Florida entrepreneur is two steps closer to establishing a medical tissue bank that eventually would be the centerpiece of a high-tech health research center linked with area hospitals, FGCU and the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in suburban Washington.
Kevin Taylor, managing director of the Southwest Florida Global Research Institute, said Friday that he has secured his first donor for the $5 million nonprofit project and has identified a vacant building on Treeline Avenue near Southwest Florida International Airport that would be a perfect fit.
Taylor, a former development director at Cleveland Clinic in Naples and executive director of the Southwest Florida Symphony, is working with a Pittsburgh man, Nicholas Jacobs, who was a co-founder of a highly recognized Pennsylvania tissue research center, to locate such a center here.
“It’s been a very good week,” Taylor said.
Jacobs also has been talking with a Michigan city about the bank, but on Friday Jacobs said Southwest Florida as a location is looking good.
“That’s the greatest news,” Taylor said. “I think that means his focus is here.”
As a nonprofit organization, Taylor has to rely on philanthropy to fund this tissue repository.
A tissue bank collects tissue specimens from surgical procedures, biopsies, blood and plasma, which are then flash-frozen. They are stored in freezers until researchers and scientists work with them. Doctors hope findings will lead to advances in battling autism, Alzheimer’s, cancer and other ailments.
