You know neurotechnology is emerging when people start putting hundreds of millions of dollars into building new centers of brain imaging excellence.

Last week, London Imperial College and GlaxoSmithKline announced plans to build a £76 million medical imaging research center in London that will staff 400 researchers. The center will focus on improving treatments for diseases like stroke and cancer, while at the same time driving new developments in imaging technology.

Even for a research-intensive university like Imperial College, the new center is on a huge scale. “This is by a long way the largest such investment internationally that I know of in imaging science,” said Leszek Borysiewicz, principal of the faculty of medicine.

The site at the college's Hammersmith Hospital campus was chosen over several top US and European institutions. It will house 400 researchers and support staff from industry and academia, half of which will be new positions. The company is contributing £28 million to the construction of the center and £16 million to furbish it with imaging equipment. The rest will be provided by Imperial College and the hosting hospital.

Basic and translational research will take place in the center when it stands finished in 2006. This will initially focus on neurological diseases and cancer; however, the publicly funded research is likely to also branch out into a number of other disorders. Borysiewicz said that there are likely to be developments in the diagnostics and therapeutics of diseases, but that the college at the same time will be able to push the technology with its strong base in engineering,
computing, and chemistry.

Fuelling basic science is a welcome side effect for the drug company. “If we can increase the science output of a major university, it's good for us because you can't discover drugs without understanding disease,” said John Brown, who oversees imaging research at GSK.

Mark my words, this is only the beginning. Wait until Wall Street realizes the power of neurofinance.