Erik Lundgren

In 1976 as a newly appointed docent in pathology I was approached by Bertil Åberg, boss at the research section of KabiVitrum, Stockholm. He was making contact with university labs to rescue a pet project which was considered too risky within the company. It dealt with the cytokine interferon at that time a potential anti-cancer drug. My group found it interesting and we got a big grant. That created some frustration within the university organization but Åberg advised me: You have found an udder with big tits coming down from heaven , just suck.

A working unit (arbetsenhet) was created within the Medical Faculty with the name the unit for Applied Cell Biology. The Dean of the Natural Science faculty objected that the Unit asked for graduate student fellowships from that faculty. We used an industrial grant to recruit top scientists, which sucked the faculty’s resources. Moreover one professor in Department of Histology did not like that we used the term Cell Biology. At a meeting he even left the room and slammed the door. Also the Vice Chancellor Lars Beckman found it unnatural that a large industrial project was housed in three different university departments. , which also was very impractical. Beckman formed a planning committee with a long name, which was abbreviated to PUT,  in Swedish meaning pillow-case.

The interferon project had resulted in the formation of the biotech company BioNative. The mandate of PUT was to organize a lab for startup companies in a new building in the campus area. Beckman used his contacts with the local county (Västerbottens Landsting) the Swedish government (where the minister Georg Andersson was an important person) to raise money for a five year budget from 1980 and building a laboratory facility. Where should that be? The obvious place was on a tennis court close to the  Department of Microbiology.

However many protested against building a house on the court, with its possibilities for relaxation for many hard working people in the hospital. It was not easy to argue that the lab would be filled with hard working young people in an atmosphere as creative as a tennis match.

The planning for the building started together with Aage Nilsson from Landstinget and the architect Thorstein Åsbjer. PUT wanted a coffee room in the middle of the building so that all movements should be via that room too increase interactions. Åsbjer told us that it was impossible, but for technical reasons (emergency exits). Instead,  he had an empty corner on each floor, where he proposed to make a creative corner, which was later much appreciated.

During a site visit to a lab in Helsinki we were convinced that a sauna should be included in the lab. Åsbjer meant that it was against the rules. But he could make room called linen storage which could be furnished as a sauna. On the question how we could defend two showers outside the store. He said after a shower you need a towel. Therefore there is a sauna in Building 6K.

Each door to the lab has two windows. Aage Nilsson motivated the lower window by the need to have a look on the legs of the technicians. When he retired some years later a female got his position as building engineer at Landstinget.

By chance when the new microbiology building was built, the coffee room happened come in the middle of the building