A biomedical research institute in Roanoke, Virginia, is to begin recruiting in the next few months and will open this autumn. Administrators plan to bring in six to eight neuroscience research groups to the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and Research Institute by September and expect to spend US$50 million in the next 5 years to recruit a total of 30 research teams to support the institute's neuroscience, cardiovascular-biology and cancer-biology endeavours. The institute's incoming director, Michael Friedlander, says that these areas are poised for big breakthroughs by combining molecular genetics, computational biology and behavioural approaches.