Science Market Update

Medical research building construction is underway at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with high hopes for top level research once the three stages of this project have all been completed. The goal for this project, which together will be called the Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research (WIMR), "is to create a new kind of, almost revolutionary, model for how we do medical research," said Dr. Robert Golden, dean of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.

One of the ways to encourage companies to invest in research is to offer them a tax credit incentive, and that's exactly what many states do, including, soon, Alabama.  If the company does their own research, they get one tax break, but if they have it done by a public research institution like the University of Alabama, they get a much larger break: 15% under Alabama's proposed new law. That's good news for UAB, UAT, and other major research campuses in the state. And the rate may be even higher if Alabama tries to match North Carolina's incentive, which just went up to 20%.

The University of Alabama in Birmingham runs one of an elite group of Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the United States, as designated by the National Cancer Institute (NCI).  The NCI's Translational Research Program is in charge of administering SPORE awards, which are focused on specific organ sites.  Now UAB is also a SPORE grantee for its brain tumor program, thanks to a recent $2.3M award over three years to its Cancer Center in conjunction with the UAB Division of Neurosurgery. UAB is one of only four institutions to receive a brain-tumor SPORE grant.

Despite controversy surrounding stem cell research, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, partnering with SANYO corporation, are pressing forward with a new machine representing a breakthrough in the treatment of patients using stem cells.

Science research at the University of Alabama, Birmingham has led to a new, simple, and cost-effective test for the cytomegalovirus infection that may cause acute hearing loss in infants.

Catastrophe has a way of catalyzing need and resources.  The 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has made University of Alabama (UAB) scientists' expertise in the biomarine environment off their coast particularly valuable.  BP has pledge up to $500 Million to study the effects of the spill, and some of that funding is making its way to biomarine research projects at UA-Birmingham through Alabama's Marine Environmental Science Consortium (MESC) and the larger Gulf Research Initiative Open Research Program.  The MESC has distributed $5 Million in Rapid Response Funds already, and 16 UAB researchers have received $308,344 in grants to fund pilot projects identified by and applied for at the UAB Gulf Oil Spill Summit last fall.

The biotechnology sector is growing and graduate students in the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Master's Program in Biotechnology are ready to build their careers (and Birmingham's biotech future) on that promise.  While there are several innovative business-science hybrid master's programs that have emerged recently in the US (see our two April 12 blogs), UA's is the first in the South and unique in its approach.

More than a management training program for scientists (which it is), the UA Biotechnology degree course pairs students with UA-based startups that need management expertise and business labor (for filing patents, for example).  This win-win situation is facilitated through a partnership with the UAB Research Foundation which manages the University's intellectual property and promotes its most promising technologies.  Graduates of the program have real hands-on business experience and can now attract biotechnology businesses to Birmingham.  In fact, the program was initiated two years ago in response to Birmingham losing a bid to host a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant.  The company cited fears that the city would not be able to produce the trained workforce it needed.