Boston Medical Center quietly transfers ownership in infectious-disease lab

Boston Medical Center and Boston University are carrying out an agreement that has enabled the hospital to sell its ownership stake in the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory, which they partnered to develop in 2003. Completed in 2009, it has failed to operate at full capacity in the interim due to opposition among neighborhood groups concerned about the research center's plans to work with some of the deadliest microbes and viruses in the world. Boston Medical Center sought an exit from the project in May 2010 and formally "withdrew from further participation" in the disease laboratory a year later, according to recent financial filings. The hospital's exit plan required Boston University to repay BMC its initial $29.1 million investment in the laboratory over a five-year span.