Science Market Update

As humans, we like to think of ourselves as superbly evolved, which is a completely valid standpoint if you place emphasis on things like consciousness and inventiveness. But our cohabitants of Earth have developed some impressive abilities of their own, many of which we can only barely understand. Take for example the bacteria that are shocking several researchers at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities lab with their unique ability to change the electrical state of metals.

Biotechnology vendors and lab suppliers in Minnesota will find a well-funded life science research market at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, according to the most recent NIH and NSF research funding statistics. In 2012, the NIH awarded the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities $243.5 million in research funding. The funding was distributed among a number of different departments at the university. For the convenience of our readers, we have composed a list with the number of projects awarded money in each science research discipline and the total amount of funding for those projects:

In a recent press release, the Mayo Clinic revealed its goal of making its Rochester, Minnesota campus a destination medical center. The Mayo Clinic will invest over $3 billion of  healthcare funding in Minnesota, making this not only the state’s largest economic development plan, but one of the largest in the country. An additional $2.1 billion in private investments will also fund the project, which includes investing $3.5 billion in the Mayo Clinic’s Rochester campus over the next twenty years.

“It’s pulsing; it’s beating! Now THAT is cool.”

While today’s advancements in biotechnology suggest that there’s nothing we can’t artificially produce, sometimes there’s just no substitute for nature’s own recipes. At least, that’s the philosophy behind the University of Minnesota’s Schmidt-Dannert Lab, whose aim is to harness compounds created in natural organisms like plants and fungi that cannot be produced by chemical means. Many of these compounds have beneficial properties that can be used in further research and drug production.

An ingredient of traditional Chinese medicine is making a modern appearance in the treatment of pancreatic cancer. It’s called the Thunder God Vine, and it has been used in teas and traditional medicine for a long time. In recent years, it’s been making a name for itself in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Now, researchers at the University of Minnesota have discovered Thunder God Vine’s surprising potency against pancreatic cancer.

Physics and nanotechnology research at the University of Minnesota has outgrown its 80-year old facility and prompted the construction of the 144,000 sf state-of-the-art building that is now rising on campus. (See the live webcam footage.) The previous home to the Physics Department, the Tate Laboratory, can no longer support the advanced research carried out by more than 150 faculty and graduate students there, nor is it adequate for a field (nanotechnology) that has only relatively recently come into being. The new $83M lab research facility will allow the physics and nanotechnology departments to move forward in this century as well as join forces in collaborative research projects. 

ARCHITECT'S RENDERING OF NEW PROTON BEAM THERAPY FACILITY IN ROCHESTER, MINN.(Courtesy of mayoclinic.org)

The University of Minnesota is planning  to construct a new $52 million new life science research building in the new Biomedical Discovery District Research Campus. The new facility will consolidate infectious disease and microbiology research conducted at the university into one complex.

Thanks to a longtime Minnesota philanthropist and the State of Minnesota, neuroscience and diabetes researchers at the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic are looking at millions in research grant funding from two new programs:

• The Wallin Discovery Fund for neuroscience at UMinn ($500K/yr.)
• The Decade of Discovery Program for diabetes research at UMinn and the Mayo Clinic ($1.86M)

Minnesotans are already familiar with the generosity of the late Win Wallin, formerly of Pillsbury and Medtronic, whose name is on a new Medical Biosciences Building in the Minneapolis Biomedical Discovery District (on the Twin Cities campus), and whose scholarship program has sent promising urban students to college at UMinn for two decades.  Now, in his honor, a new grant program has been announced by the Wallin charity to provide $500,000 a year in funding for bold research in neuroscience at the University.  UMinn recommended neuroscience as the best candidate field for the new grant program, which will provide support to bridge the gap between seed funding and result demonstration sufficient to draw NIH grants.