Science Market Update

November is Diabetes Awarness Month and November 14th is World Diabetes Day. With that we would like to feature Harvard Medical School's Dr. Denise Faustman, who has been awarded the 2011 George and Judith Goldman Angel Award for her biomedical research on a cure for Type 1 diabetes.

We’ve noticed a trend in public/private alliances and an increase in translational research facilities being built at university medical school campuses.  Specifically, we've written about these innovative research funding trends in this blog series:

Translational Research (i.e. basic science to clinical science) centers are opening across the country at top medical schools and universities.  These facilities can be largely privately-funded through philanthropy (see Duke and the Coulter Translational Research Center); publicly-funded through the NIH, such the university centers in the CTSA program; or, adjunct to hospital facilities (like Penn Med's new lab facility), may leverage funding through treatment and care channels.  Bringing new technology to market through university translational research means private funding sources (such as VC) are not required to invest in the earlier, riskier, stages of new drug and product development. 

The laboratory equipment supplier Thermo Fisher Scientific has donated their first piece of equipment to the nonprofit Seeding Labs. This admirable nonprofit provides labs in developing countries with much needed lab supplies and professional training.

Once upon a time realizing university officials really wanted to know where students were congregating and what they were doing together had an ominous ring, but that's all changed in the super-connected, GPS-tracked world of today's social media.  Internet connectivity no longer means checking in from the vague no-man's-land of cyberspace: with the smartphones almost everyone now has (at least the Gen Y set), you are constantly locatable in real space through the geo-locator technology built into your phone.  This geo-social component of social networking offers new possibilities for interacting with places as well as people, and leaving a market-opportunity-rich breadcrumb trail while you're at it.  

Student affairs personnel at universities across the United States have already begun to utilize the new tool available to them through companies like FourSquare.  Others who haven't jumped on the bandwagon are analyzing the numbers to see if geo-social connectivity is worth the investment of man hours to set up and administer it.  To assist schools in making this decision, the Education Advisory Board has put out a useful Student Affairs Technology Update report on using FourSquare specifically.  The following chart from the report shows how various campuses are already using geo-social media and to what ends:

     The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has recently announced the reformation of the federal Research & Development expenditure website to make data more transparent and easy to navigate. This new online tool now allows the public to monitor national progress in technology and research innovation.

In a recent flux of research laboratory constructs, a majority of the 21st century designs and new facilities fall under the sustainable category. But what makes a laboratory, or any other building, sustainable?

         Green architecture is widely endorsed within the fields of residential, commercial businesses, community centers, and educational/research oriented buildings. One particular firm, HDR, Inc, has embraced the challenge of incorporating the needs of the global populations with the necessities of sustaining the environment in which these facilities are to be erected.

A recent ruling by a federal appeals court will allow the Obama Administration to continue funding embryonic stem cell research. The ruling reversed a previous injunction by a district court judge which would have frozen federal funding for stem cell science research. This new ruling ends months of uncertainty for numerous scientists who rely on federal funding for their stem cell research.

The Obama Administration praised the 2-1 stem cell court ruling and reaffirmed their commitment to promoting and advancing embryonic stem cell research. White house spokesman Nick Papas hailed the court's decision saying, "Responsible stem cell research has the potential to treat some of our most devastating diseases and conditions."

Despite fears of massive cuts to vital Life Science and Bioscience research funding, the National Institutes of Health emerged relatively unscathed from the recent budget negotiations on Capitol Hill.

Despite calls to for massive cuts in the federal science funding budget, President Obama has remained committed to an increase in new biotechnology research funding for federal institutions such as the NIH, NSF, CDC, and FDA.