The main location of Erasmus MC is located next to the Museumpark.
History
The history of Erasmus MC goes back to the municipal Coolsingel Hospital, which was built in the period 1839 - 1848 by design of city architect :nl:Willem Nicolaas Rose|Willem Nicolaas Rose. Due to delays during construction, the hospital could not be used until 1851. The building was at the corner of the :nl:Van Oldenbarneveltstraat |Van Oldebarneveltstraat and the Coolsingel in Rotterdam and had an imposing facade with a width of eighty-two meters. The first hospital director was Dr. Jan Bastiaan Molewater, who was also a lecturer at the Clinical School that was opened in Rotterdam in 1828. The hospital was largely destroyed during the German bombing of Rotterdam by the Luftwaffe in 1940. Only the :nl:Coolsingelpoort|Coolsingelpoort, the former gate to the hospital, now reminds of this hospital at the Lijnbaan. After a long period of temporary provisions, the new :nL:Dijkzigtziekenhuis|Dijkzigt Hospital could finally be used in 1961 at the location where the Erasmus MC is now located. The Dijkzigt Hospital was named after :nl:Villa Dijkzigt|Villa Dijkzigt on the enormous estate called :nl:Land van Hoboken|Land van Hoboken, which was the home of the Dutch shipowner's family :nl:Van Hoboken|Van Hoboken. In 1924, this land was sold to the Rotterdam municipality and on which since today the Natural History Museum Rotterdam is housed. The Foundation for Clinical Higher Education in Rotterdam, founded in 1950, was designated by the Dutch government in 1965 to become one of the seven major medical training centers in the Netherlands. In 1966, this new medical training center was opened at the :nl:G.J. de Jonghweg|G.J. de Jonghweg with 160 medical students. The Dijkzig Hospital became its corresponding academic hospital. In 1970, the Dijkzigt Hospital merged with the :nl:Sophia Kinderziekenhuis|Sophia Children's Hospital into the Academic Hospital Rotterdam. In 1973, the medical training center of Rotterdam became part of the Erasmus University Rotterdam, designated as Faculty of Medicine and Health Science, and moved to the complex of the Dijkzigt Hospital. In 1993 the Sophia Children's Hospital also moved to this location. In the same year, also the :nl:Daniel den Hoedkliniek|Daniel den Hoed Clinic - a main Dutch oncology center named after Daniël den Hoed, the founder of radiotherapy in the Netherlands - became part of the Academic Hospital Rotterdam. On 1 June 2002, the Dijkzigt Hospital, the Sophia Children's Hospital, the Daniel den Hoed Clinic, and the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, all formally merged into the current Erasmus University Medical Center, which is affiliated with Erasmus University Rotterdam. Erasmus MC started in May 2009 with a major new construction and renovation project at their location. The first part was completed in 2013 and put into use. The second part was completed in late 2017 and put into operation in 2018. A new main entrance was constructed close to the Dijkzigt metro station, on the Wytemaweg. Hereafter is planned the demolition of the old Dijkzigt Hospital and the renovation of the Faculty of Medicine tower and the buildings of the Sophia Children's Hospital.
In May 2011 Erasmus Medical Center signed an agreement with California-based Complete Genomics, a life sciences company that has developed and commercialized a proprietary DNA sequencing platform for human genome sequencing and analysis. Complete Genomics signed a contract to produce genetic sequence for 250 Erasmus Medical Center samples. In September 2012 the Beijing Genomics Institute purchased Complete Genomics for $117M. The United StatesCommittee on Foreign Investment in the United States cleared the purchase by December 2012. The head of bioinformatics, Dr. Peter J. van der Spek, claimed that Complete Genomics' complete human genome sequencing service will allow us to study genetic variations at a higher resolution and greater sensitivity than has been previously possible."
MERS controversy
In the ongoing investigation of the MERS virus, a team from Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam received two patient samples from Dr. Ali Mohamed Zaki, an Egyptian scientist working in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. After sequencing the MERS DNA, EMC claimed ownership of the samples. EMC now requires scientists hoping to work on the MERS problem to sign legal agreements with Erasmus. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is still waiting to receive samples of MERS for testing that were collected in October 2012 because the legal teams from the CDC and Erasmus cannot negotiate agreeable terms for a material transfer agreement. As a result of these legal delays during a disease outbreak, Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, publicly criticized Erasmus for putting patent laws ahead of protecting "your people".
