The University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix in partnership with Arizona State University is preparing for the arrival of its first medical school class.

Twenty-four new medical students will arrive at the Phoenix Biomedical Campus in late July and begin classes Aug. 6. Classes will be held at the medical school's facilities in the three remodeled buildings of the historic Phoenix Union High School.

In addition, a new facility supporting the medical school recently opened at the biomedical campus. The four-story Arizona Biomedical Collaborative building will house the ASU department of biomedical informatics on two floors and medical school laboratory space on two others. The $30 million, 85,600-square-foot building is adjacent to the headquarters of the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen).

The first class officially puts to rest Phoenix's long-time reputation of being the nation's largest city lacking an allopathic medical school. In fact, Phoenix had been the only city among the nation's 50 most populous without a medical school. The breakthrough occurred in 2004, when the presidents of ASU and UA signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on a joint medical school program—a rare if not unique arrangement among two universities.

More than 600 applied for the total 134 spots in the medical school class—110 for the Tucson class plus 24 in Phoenix. Twenty faculty will teach the Phoenix students.

The medical school received a boost in June via the state budget passed by legislators and signed by the Gov. Janet Napolitano. The package includes $25 million for the Phoenix Biomedical Campus, including $6 million to expand the annual class size of the College of Medicine-Phoenix to 48 students. The goal is to reach 150 students per class by 2012.

The $25 million also included $10.5 million to design two new research and education buildings of more than 330,000-square-feet apiece to support the medical school: the Health Sciences Education Building for medical, pharmaceutical, nursing, and allied health students, linking programs of the three universities; and Arizona Biomedical Collaborative-2, a research building to house translational research activities.

Also included in the budget package was $4 million for allied health programs of Northern Arizona University; $2 million for the ASU department of biomedical informatics; $1.5 million for the UA College of Pharmacy; and $1 million for the Arizona Telemedicine Program of UA.

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More information:

"Downtown campus prepares for 1st medical students," Arizona Republic, 06/07/2007

Med school, SFAz highlighted in state budget, 06/28/2007

Collaboration touted at event marking new ASU/UA facility, 03/27/2006