Science Market Update

A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study that was published on April 4 in the journal Stem Cells sheds light on the mechanisms of human stem cell biology. For the first time, UNC Chapel Hill science researchers have isolated adult stem cells from human intestinal tissue. According to News Medical, the feat will enable researchers to investigate new ways of treating inflammatory bowel disease and lessen the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation therapy, which often have harmful effects on the stomach.

The U.S. News and World Report ranked the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill number one in primary care for the first time, according to The Daily Tar Heel. The prestigious distinction signals the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s commitment to quality care when it comes to North Carolina patients. Since the ranking incorporates the opinions of the school’s peers, it’s evident that a number of schools across the United States recognize UNC-Chapel Hill’s strength in medicine. The university's medical school, which enrolls 782 students, was also ranked second in family medicine, fifth in rural medicine, ninth in AIDS research and treatment and 22^nd in general research.

North Carolina appears to have a rich life science sales market when taking into account recent life science funding statistics. North Carolina Biotechnology Center in particular gave $2.9 million in loans and grants to life science companies and researchers during this second fiscal quarter. North Carolina Biotechnology Center has been funding life science researchers and startups since 1984, helping to make North Carolina the third largest biotechnology cluster in the United States. Ten different programs received awards based on entrepreneurship, technology and education. North Carolina now hosts over 500 life science companies and 58,000 employees who earn an average salary greater than $78,000.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill recently began construction on a new facility that will be used for research on brain injuries, according to Vice President for Facilities Planning and Development Ray Lafrenaye and a Chapelboro.com news article. The facility will be named the Comprehensive Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Center and is being constructed in the former University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Border’s bookstore building on Fordham Boulevard. The center is planning on opening for operations in the next few months.

Medical students at Duke University finally have their own home after being spread out over the medical campus for 73 years. Filled with natural light from the glass walls and study nooks for doing work, this building is a gorgeous feat of architecture. It has been named the Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans Center for Health Education, and it’s located right in the middle of the medical campus. The center provides a space for medical students who used to have to study in the basement of Duke Medicine’s Purple Zone, the Davison Building and every so often, spaces rented for large gatherings.

County commissioners in Durham, North Carolina, recently voted to change the name of Durham Regional Hospital in order to boost its reputation. The renamed Duke Regional Hospital, which is operated by the Duke University Health System but owned by the county, says renaming the hospital will help attract patients given Duke’s world-renowned reputation.

Duke University has been selected as one of seven schools to be on the forefront of a United States effort to help eliminate desperate poverty around the world. Duke will receive a $10 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to form a development lab whose goal is to pinpoint and support progress in solutions to worldwide health problems in low- and middle-income nations.

With "life sciences" and "physical sciences" occupying distinct areas of thought within science as a whole, it is sometimes easy to forget the ways in which they inform each other. Not so at North Carolina State University, where researchers from the Department of Physics have solved a key puzzle for Parkinson's Disease research.