Science Market Update

Each year millions of Americans risk undergoing surgery for a variety of problems such as organ transplants, mending broken bones and cosmetic surgeries. Often surgery is necessary to fix ongoing health problems with the benefits of the surgery usually outweighing the risks. Despite the potential risks to surgery patients, in the United States more than 48 million surgeries are performed each year. In most cases, undergoing surgery is relatively risk free, but not always.

In the United States more than 15 million people suffer from food allergies. One of the deadliest is to peanuts. Peanut allergies are such a dangerous allergy that many public places have chosen to eliminate peanuts from the menu, rather than risk someone dying from an allergic reaction, such as some airlines and schools.  Researchers at National Jewish Health have found a new way to combat peanut and other food related allergic reactions, thus bringing the PB&J back to children everywhere.  This discovery comes at an opportune time because it seems that food allergies are on the rise.

A research team composed of researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder and Yale University recently released a public demonstration of their Map of Life, a database that stores the geographic locations of the world's species. The demonstration version contains about 25,000 different species of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish to date, but the goal is to have a complete record for every living organism on Earth. 

 The University of Colorado already has a terrific medical program at its Anschutz Medical Campus. This April we talked about their groundbreaking efforts against multiple sclerosis. Now, Anschutz Medical is waging war on one of America's greatest enemies: obesity.

We're finding out that there's a lot more to malnutrition among infants and children than just not getting enough to eat, or enough high-quality food. Individuals may develop malnutrition as a result of what is or isn't growing in their gut, where food gets processed. It's a fascinating insight with significant implications for treating a deadly world problem. In addition to getting sufficient good food, malnutrition could be addressed with novel dietary and microbial therapeutics, effectively optimizing a person's ability to draw nutrients and calories from the food and drink they take in, as well as making sure the immune system is being supported rather than compromised in the process.

The Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building on the East Campus of the University of Colorado Boulder is already welcoming researchers to their new labs and offices, and on April 26 there will be an official dedication ceremony for the 330,000sf innovative life science facility. While the university is still waiting for state funding to construct a fifth wing for teaching space, the current building is scheduled to be fully occupied by June. As we reported in a widely-read earlier blog on this much-anticipated research complex, one of the key tenants will be the Biofrontiers Institute, formerly the CIMB. Joining them are the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and the Division of Biochemistry.

The University of Colorado's Anschutz Medical Campus has long been a leader in understanding Multiple Sclerosis (MS) with numerous clinical trials and essential basic research. Now the University plans to create the translational Research Laboratory at the Rocky Mountain MS Center, which will transform its investigation into treatment for the disease that will directly benefit patients.

Bioresearch students at the University of Colorado, Boulder will be able to do new in depth research into the conversion of biomass to various chemicals and fuels, thanks to a new bioresearch grant from the NSF. The NSF grant was awarded to the Colorado Center for Biorefining and Biofuels, or C2B2, a joint research renewable energy facility used by CU-Boulder, Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State University, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

The National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program has just announced the 2012 winners of its prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who are exceptional both as teachers and researchers.  The University of Colorado Boulder boasts two winners this year from the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology deparment (EBIO).  Together their awards bring over $1.5M in new funding to their research on amphibian and avian biology. The laboratory aspects of Drs. Safran and Johnson's research involve genetics, stable-isotope analysis, and the study of microscopic disease-causing parasites. 

Last Spring, we wrote a popular blog (New CU-Boulder Biotech Building to Anchor Local Bioscience Industry) on the Colorado Institute in Molecular Biotechnology (CIMB), its future home in the new Jenny Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building, and the potential impact on the local economy.  While the Caruthers biotech building has pushed back its opening date from November 2011 to early in 2012, the CIMB is going strong and has in fact reorganized to become the new Biofrontiers Institute.