What can a one-eighth-cent sales tax buy in Johnson County?

How about laboratories equipped with the latest high-tech instruments? And stylish accommodations with plenty of privacy for patients?

That’s what you’ll find at the University of Kansas Medical Center’s new Clinical Research Center in Fairway, a $19 million project and the newest beneficiary of Johnson County’s Education and Research Triangle sales tax.

Patients started trickling into the renovated 82,400-square-foot building on Shawnee Mission Parkway last week. Today, KU is holding a grand opening for VIPs.

The research center is designed with one purpose in mind: to provide KU with a place to conduct the earliest stage of new drug and treatment tests — called Phase 1 clinical trials — on patients.

“We’ll be able to accelerate things by having a facility and culture dedicated to doing one thing,” said Raymond Perez, the center’s medical director. “We will get people thinking, talking, breathing Phase 1 research.”

KU in Lawrence has a nationally recognized program to create new drugs and find new uses for existing medications. KU Medical Center’s Cancer Center has been eager to expand its portfolio of drug studies. But efforts to test new drugs here had been hindered by limited facilities. Some new KU drugs have been sent to other institutions for study.

“The center will give us the opportunity to use that expertise to benefit Kansas,” Perez said.

Perez said the center is starting out with about 10 Phase 1 trials. Patients will come to the center to be examined by doctors and nurses, to have blood drawn and undergo tests, and to receive infusions of drugs and other therapies.

By the time the center reaches full capacity in seven years or so, Perez expects to have 25 to 30 trials under way involving 300 or more patients. That would place KU among the top clinical research centers in the country, he said.

The Clinical Research Center is in a building donated by the Hall Family Foundation as part of an $18-million gift to the KU Cancer Center.The building’s $19 million renovation is funded with sales tax revenue.

The research center is the second part of Johnson County’s Research Triangle to reach completion.

In 2008, Johnson County voters approved a one-eighth-cent sales tax that raised about $15 million per year to help pay for the development of new research and educational facilities.

The first point of the triangle, Kansas State University’s International Animal Health and Food Safety Institute in Olathe, opened in April. The third point, the Business, Engineering, Science and Technology Building on KU’s Edwards campus, is set to open March 2.

With decor befitting a boutique hotel — dark, wood-paneled walls, tile accents and thick carpeting — the Clinical Research Center is a far cry from the kinds of facilities where patient research often is done.

Frank and Sana Shagets of Joplin used to go to the main KU Medical Center campus for the infusions of an experimental drug Sana receives in hopes of staying the progression of her Alzheimer’s disease.

The old facility was “down in the bowels of the hospital, where patient research centers typically are at older hospitals,” said Frank Shagets, a physician. “This center is phenomenal, as good as any in the country.”

Phase 1 clinical trials typically are done on small groups of patients to determine how a drug is metabolized, what side effects it causes and whether it has the intended effects. Later-stage trials determine how beneficial a drug may be.

Many of the trials at the KU center will be for cancer drugs. But several trials, such as the one with Sana Shagets, involve Alzheimer’s disease. Additional trials will look at therapies for multiple sclerosis, diabetes, liver disease and other conditions.

Phase 1 trials are offered to patients who have exhausted conventional options for care, Perez said. But the commonly held view that that these trials are only likely to benefit future generations of patients is no longer true, he said.

As the genetics of cancer are better understood, new therapies are being targeted to specific groups of patients. Patients matched to appropriate drugs in Phase 1 trials often live longer now, Perez said.

Sana Shagets signed up for the Alzheimer’s drug trial primarily to improve her own chances, her husband said.

“But it will clearly help other people in the future,” Frank Shagets said. “You never know. This might be the home run.”