On September 5th, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, located in Memphis, TN, received the largest superconducting magnet in the world. You may be asking, ”what would a hospital need a 10-ton magnet that’s a million times stronger than the earth’s magnetic field for?” Below, you’ll find your answer.  Background The superconducting magnet was designed/built in Zurich, Switzerland and was manufactured by Massachusetts-based Bruker Corp. The $10 million dollar investment will be housed in the lower level of the Kay Research and Care Center of St. Jude Research Hospital. For reference, St. Jude currently has nine other magnets operating between 400-850 megahertz. This magnet, however, is 1.1 gigahertz — the next powerful magnets are at the University of Toronto, in Germany, and Israel.  Why Is This Important? To date, there’s been little capability to study proteins and other microcellular components at the level this magnet provides. This magnet’s nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer will give St. Jude the clearest possible view for studying proteins, DNA, RNA, and other biomolecules. What researchers find in this deep cell biology can be used in drug discovery work.  Future Applications The hope is that this research can lead to higher cancer cure rates. “It helps us answer challenging biological questions that so far, actually, we have not been able to,” said Dr. Charalampos Kalodimos, chairman of the hospital’s structural biology department.  Stay Up-to-Date on Rare-Earth Metals Through Apex For more information on break-through magnetic discoveries, browse our magnet in the news section or sign up for our monthly newsletter.