GALVESTON — About 750 people will gather today at the University of Texas Medical Branch to dedicate a $174 million bio-defense laboratory where researchers will develop drugs and vaccines to battle infectious diseases, including deadly germs terrorists might use.

Dedication of the Galveston National Laboratory is a rare reason to celebrate at an institution left in a precarious state by Hurricane Ike.

Researchers at the 186,267-square-foot lab, which fully staffed will employ about 300 people, will study such pathogens as Anthrax, avian flu, bubonic plague, typhus, West Nile, influenza, drug-resistant tuberculosis and hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola, among others.

One of two approved in 2003 by the National Institutes of Health after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the laboratory would attract world renowned scientists and might pull biotech firms to the island, city and medical branch officials say.

“It will serve to reinforce the strength of the biomedical research in the Galveston and Houston community — and we are really one community,” said Dr. Stanley Lemon, director of the university’s Institute for Human Infections and Immunity.

“It will help to attract industry — not just research — but manufacturing arms of the industry that should have a significant economic consequence for the county and Galveston.”

Officials expect the lab to pump about $1.4 billion into the state’s economy throughout 20 years.

But while the seven-story laboratory plugs the island into a huge federal biodefense spending pipeline, some environmentalists and residents say it puts the city’s population in harm’s way if pathogens escaped.

The second laboratory, being built at Boston University Medical Center, has met some resistance, including a lawsuit filed in 2006 by opponents claiming an environmental study of the lab was inadequate.

While island residents have been more receptive, some observers have questioned the logic of putting such a facility on a barrier island vulnerable to hurricanes.

The line on maps meteorologists use to depict dead-center of Hurricane Ike’s Sept. 13 landfall passes just blocks west of the medical branch campus.

Storm surge flooded 750,000 square feet in buildings there, caused about $710 million in expenses, knocked out most operations, including John Sealy Hospital, and left thousands of employees in limbo.

But the Galveston National Laboratory building was unharmed. Just a little water blew in under the doors, Lemon said.

The high-security facility, made of precast concrete standing on 800 pylons extending 120 feet into the ground, was built to withstand hurricanes.

Such Biosafety Level 4 labs have unparalleled safety records, Lemon said.

“BSL-4 labs have gone over 40 years without a single release,” Lemon said. “They have multiple layers of redundant safety and containment measures; the people at the greatest risk from pathogens are those who work within the lab.”

Most of the microorganisms researchers will study are not very transmissible between people, Lemon said.

“It’s not like it escapes from here and races like wildfire,” he said. While influenza is highly transmissible, it also already is in the environment, he said.

With an uncertain future and layoffs looming at the storm-battered institution, today’s dedication is a bright spot, officials say.

“It took six years for us to get here and the effort of literally hundreds of individuals — architects, engineers, construction workers.” Lemon said. “It is a nice thing to be able to celebrate this event in Galveston.”

The dedication, at which U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, are scheduled to deliver keynote speeches, is open to the public.

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At A Glance

What: Formal dedication of the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch

When: 11:30 a.m. today

Where: William C. Levin Hall, 11^th and Market streets