Science Market Update

The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center recently announced that it will be giving $9 million in grants to Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital to update research labs. Harvard Medical School will be receiving $5 million of the money and plans to use the research funding to create a Laboratory of Systems Pharmacology, which will be multidisciplinary in nature and will help to supply better information on clinical trials while drugs are in the process of development. Boston Children's Hospital will use the $4 million it receives from the state to establish the Children’s Center for Cell Therapy, which will include renovating labs to create specialized stem cell culturing facilities.

A $20 million gift from Philip and Cheryl Milstein to the Columbia University Medical Center was announced recently. The donation will be used as part of an effort to rejuvenate the medical campus with construction of the Medical & Graduate Education Building on Haven Street between West 171st and West 172nd Streets. Administrators at Columbia University Medical Center said the building will include “innovative classroom and study spaces that will incorporate state-of-the-art information technology while facilitating collaborative, team-based learning.” The new building’s function will be the training of students in the College of Physicians and Surgeons and the biomedical science departments in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. (Read our earlier blog on this new construction project at CUMC here.)

At Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, researchers have announced the results of an important study showing that high levels of estrogen in the mother during pregnancy can increase a daughter's susceptibility to breast cancer later on. Specifically, the BRCA1 gene is disabled in an estrogen-rich environment, preventing it from carrying out its DNA repair tasks and leaving an opening for cancerous cells to grow. The research was presented at the 2013 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) meeting by Dr. Leena Hilakivi-Clarke (right). The Hilakivi-Clarke Lab is on the same floor of the Research Building as that of Dr. Robert Clarke, who collaborated on the study; the Clarkes both carry out hormone-related cancer research, and Robert Clarke is the Dean for Research at the Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC). 

The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington Medicine in Seattle are pleased to announce the arrival soon of Dr. Eric Holland, a world-class brain cancer research scientist and neurosurgeon, who will head up the Human Biology Division at Hutch as well as the Alvord Brain Tumor Center at UW. The eminent MD/PhD is being lured away from Manhattan's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where he directs the MSKCC brain tumor center and has his lab within the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program, where his team studies the molecular mechanisms underlying the development of central nervous system tumors. In addition to being the recipient of many prestigious awards over years, Holland brings with him over $3M a year in NIH/NCI funding. It's unclear how many of his 13 lab members will follow him across the country to take on new challenges at Hutch and UW.

[Photo courtesy of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center]

Long considered one of the inferior senses, anyone who has lost their ability to taste as a result of age or cancer treatment will tell you life's luster is considerably dimmed in the absence of this sensory experience. Fortunately, research into taste and smell is going strong in Philadelphia at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, which is the only non-profit scientific basic research institute in the world dedicated entirely to understanding these intertwined senses. Once an entity within the University of Pennsylvania, the Center branched out on its own several decades ago, with labs a few blocks from the Penn campus on Market Street. Researchers at Monell work interdisciplinarily and many have joint appointments with Penn. Other research projects are carried out in conjunction with scientists at Thomas Jefferson University, also in Philly, and indeed with university and private lab investigators around the world.

Neurobiology research has a long and storied history at Columbia University and its Medical School in New York, dating back to the groundbreaking work of American neurologist Harry Grundfest 60 years ago. 30 years ago Columbia became one of the first universities to bring together diverse, cross-disciplinary researchers in neighboring labs to study behavior at the cellular, molecular, and systems level. By 2004, when Columbia celebrated its 250th anniversary, university president Lee Bollinger (right) announced the formation of a Mind Brain Behavior Initiative to more productively bring scientists into an even more integrated research effort across not only the two existing New York City campuses, but with an anchor (and crossroads) at the new CU Manhattanville campus then in the active planning stages.

Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City has just celebrated the opening of its Leon and Norma Hess Center for Science and Medicine in Harlem, with no fewer than 6 full floors (180,000sf) dedicated to laboratory research. The 2 buildings that make up the research facilities and the residential/clinical tower have been under construction for four years, and when we last reported on their progress, the opening had been projected into Spring of 2013. Clearly they've made up some time and are eager to be fully operational as soon as possible. In fact, in a news release, officials said that they had originally expected it to take 4-5 years from the opening to a point where they were fully staffed (with new recruits), but now they've shortened that time to 18-24 months.

Most of us ate turkey with friends and family in a warm house yesterday. Today many are shopping. Meanwhile on Long Island, Staten Island and the Jersey Shore, volunteer organizations are still hard at work cleaning up the mess from Sandy and helping people move their lives forward. Instead of Thanksgiving at home with family, military veterans volunteering with Team Rubicon probably ate a donated meal with fellow workers or community members. Maybe they got to rest their muscles for a day.

The Department of Neuroscience at New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine comprises 25 research laboratories with total NIH funding for 2012 of $19.3M. Most labs are on the 9th Floor of the Icahn Medical Institute building on Madison Avenue. Neuroscience faculty may also receive support and engage in collaborative research through MSSM's Friedman Brain Institute, which coordinates brain and spinal cord research from departments and clinics across the medical school campus. In fact, the largest recipient of 2012 NIH funding at MSSM Neuroscience is Brain institute Director Eric J. Nestler, MD, PhD.

At the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, in the Longwood medical neighborhood in Boston, researchers have reached a biotech milestone with tremendous potential for future drug testing and development. Instead of resorting to animals for testing, they may soon be using a simulated organ that lives on a chip. It has mechanical and biological (cellular) parts, and yes, it breathes, thanks to a vacuum system that pumps air through. The bio-inspired micro-device has gone through several tests recently to assess its accuracy in mimicking the human lung when bacteria or potentially toxic drugs are introduced. Results: Positive. The lung-on-a-chip replicates responses found in animal models and observations of human lung function. Indeed, because the device uses human lung and blood vessel cells, it acts may act more like a lung in a human body than lab animals.