Science Market Update

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is a major funding agency for stem cell research in the Golden State. Since voters approved the establishment of the agency in 2004, the CIRM has spent billions on research and facilities with the aim of making California the stem cell capital of the US. Now, in a move to advance that research mission even further, the agency has announced awards of $32M to investigators and stem cell companies to create a biobank of diseased cell lines for the use of researchers around the world. Called the Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (hiPSC) Initiative Awards, the project will generate and ensure the availability of high quality disease-specific hiPSC resources for disease modeling, target discovery and drug discovery and development for prevalent, genetically complex diseases. 

Cancer research is hot, and the best in the field are hotly-courted by top cancer research centers, often with very attractive compensation packages in addition to state-of-the-art labs and equipment. As if fighting cancer weren't challenging enough, even renowned universities with world-class biomedical programs like the University of California San Diego have had some of their shining stars in the laboratory snatched away by big-money states like Texas in recent years. Not to be outdone or undermined, UCSD has recently engaged in some aggressive recruiting of its own and is proud to announce that two very important players in the cancer research field have joined the Moores Cancer Center faculty: Dr. Napoleone Ferrara (formerly of Genentech) and Dr. Razelle Kurzrock (formerly of MD Anderson at the University of Texas).

The big, shiny black solar panels you're used to seeing bolted onto south-facing rooftops may soon be obsolete, if researchers at UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute continue to advance solar nanoscience at their current lightspeed pace. In fact, you not only won't recognize the new technology, you won't even be able to see it -- because it will be virtually transparent. And instead of being mounted to the roof, these thin plastic flexible sheets will cover your windows and skylights, as well as smaller surfaces like the face of your smartphone or tablet. What if the sun's not shining brightly? No problem, because these polymer solar cells (PSCs) absorb mostly ultra-violet and near-infrared (NIR) light, rather than the visible light that more traditional solar technology relies upon.

Bio researchers in the Gene Expression Laboratory  and Laboratory of Genetics at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego have done something remarkable: they've succeeded in turning blood from the umbilical cord (cord blood) into the more specialized cells found in neuronal networks. And they've done it in one transcriptional move using a single protein. Like embryonic stem cells, cord blood stem cells are undifferentiated, meaning they can transform into any cell type. This plasticity has been recognized and studied for several decades now, but typically multiple transcription factors are necessary to create specialized stem cells like those found in the brain.

Funding makes laboratory research possible, which makes discovery possible, which leads to advancing knowledge and treatment options. But the primary job of a top scientist and lab director should not be to write grant proposals at the expense of time spent actually doing research. With that insight in mind, the University of California San Francisco put a system in place 5 years ago called the Resource Allocation Program (RAP). The function of the RAP is to streamline the intramural funding process so that faculty only have to fill out one application for many grants, and then only twice a year on set dates. A recent review of the program shows it to be a success, with a 66% increase in overall applications submitted and approximately a 20% increase in funding awarded in the past year alone.

A vital part of academic research is networking, and one of the ways researchers share their work is at professional conferences. Universities and departments sponsor these conferences where groundbreaking papers are given (usually long before publishing) and colleagues from around the world share insights. The University of California Los Angeles has world-class scientists and other thinkers in its ranks, and Los Angeles seems a natural hub for gathering great minds for this important mode of networking. Unfortunately, UCLA has lacked meeting facilities on par with the caliber of its faculty and research labs. That is about to be remedied, thanks to a commitment by the UC Regents and a generous donor pledge to build a new conference center with a 250-bed hotel right on campus and near existing facilities. According to UCLA Chancellor Gene Block:

Bone marrow was the first stem cell source to be widely used in clinical transplant surgery to replace damaged bone as a result of injury or chemotherapy. Unfortunately, bone marrow grafts are painful, and the appropriate donor is not always available when the need is there. Now research at the University of California Los Angeles' Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine has demonstrated successfully that stem cells from the patient's own fat (i.e. adipose tissue) can be made usable for bone damage treatment. Bone marrow is, after all, the soft, fatty tissue inside your bones that contains immature cells (aka stem cells) that give rise to all of your blood cells. So looking to fatty tissue from another part of the body to produce mesenchymal cells has made sense all along, though it has taken the efforts of several UCLA teams to show how it can be done in an animal model.

You may know that Biotechnology Calendar, Inc. has been bringing life science researchers and laboratory supply vendors together for 19 years now, but did you know that we began in San Diego with the UCSD Biotechnology Vendor Showcase™ Event?  This showcase is still one of the largest on-campus networking events for scientific research and lab product suppliers.  Each year it draws an enthusiastic annual following of Laboratory product supply companies and top-level research scientists.  This year the Biotechnology Vendor Showcase™ Event at the University of California, San Diego is expected to attract over 700 university scientists who will be there to actively seek new products and services for their life science research programs. 

The University of California Irvine may be a youngster in the world of great universities (having been established as recently as 1965), but the Southern California campus has not wasted any time distinguishing its research and academic programs. In fact, according to a recent ranking by the UK's Times Higher Education, UC Irvine is #1 in the US and #4 in the world among the Times' Top 100 Universities Under 50 Years Old. The new ranking category was added to specifically look at the merits of campuses that were not old enough to compete with prestigious, long-established institutions in areas like alumni support and "reputation" but nonetheless were strong in research and publications. The 100 Under 50 recognizes current and future promise more than past success, and in that respect UCI is unmatched in the US.

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), California's stem cell agency, has just announced a new round of stem cell research funding totalling more than $69M. $12M of that will go to 5 biomedical scientists at the University of California San Diego, with an additional $4.3M awarded to a researcher at Scripps Institute, and a further $4M to two lab teams at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. That brings the total for UCSD and its affiliate La Jolla research institutes to $17.5M for this third round of CIRM's Early Translational Awards program, which supports projects that are in the initial stages of identifying drugs or cell types that could become disease therapies. UCSD alone received almost twice as much stem cell research funding in this round as any other public university, including UCSF.

The UCSD researchers and their labs that won the recent CIRM grants are: