Science Market Update

Americans are making, drinking, and exporting more wine than ever before. A hobby for some and serious business for others, winemaking consumes a whole lot of grapes every year (in the neighborhood of 4 million tons in the US alone), and that number is growing. But as with any type of industry, there's a certain industrial waste to be managed. In the case of winemaking, it's called pomace, and up to now vintners have been paying to have the pulpy mass hauled away. Now food science researchers at Oregon State University in Corvallis have come up with a process to make pomace into useful products, from biodegradable fiberboard to a nutritional foodstuff, which is the kind of earth-friendly, business-savvy research from which OSU is likely to profit nicely when the technology is commercialized internationally.

[Oregon grape fields, courtesy of Oregon Wine]

The Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland has just announced an important partnership with San Diego-based bioprinting technology company Organovo. Research into the biology of cancer, especially how it metastasizes, has been complicated in the past by the limitations of animal models and cell cultures, which really don't tell us enough about the workings of cancer within a human being. Organovo creates living, 3-D human tissue using their bioprinting device, the NovoGen MMX (below). The partnership between OHSU and Organovo will allow cancer research at Knight Institute labs to much more closely model the complex architecture of malignancy within the human body, using in vitro tissue. Ultimately this will lead to the development of more accurate therapeutics and pre-clinical trials.

Researchers trying to find ways to help cure children of disease before they are born with it face an uphill challenge, in part because research on human embryos (even research that might result in a human embryo) is limited by the federal government when federal funding is at issue. Yet progress is being made, notably in the case of mitochondrial diseases passed from mother to child. A gene therapy procedure being studied and tested at Oregon Health Sciences University puts the nucleus of an egg cell with the mother's DNA into the scooped-out mitochondrial shell of another, healthier woman's egg cell. Then the egg is fertilized in vitro and gestated in utero. When research on nonhuman primates three years ago was a success (the monkeys are all alive and well), they tested the basic steps of the procedure with donated human eggs. They brought the hybrid eggs to the blastocyst stage, then cultured lines and did testing on them. At least 20% of the fertilized samples would have been viable for placement in utero.

Oregon State University in Corvallis is the state's leading public research institution and has recently announced that the 2011 fiscal year ending in June was its 2nd best ever for overall research funding levels (the prior year being #1 by a hair). In fact, 2011 was OSU's top year for private sector funding, at $35M, which inclulded payments for testing services, environmental analysis, prototype development and licensing fees. That figure represents a 42% increase over 2 years. Alll in all, Oregon State counted $261.7M in external funding in the 2011 fiscal year.

An Oregon State University research lab led by Gregory Rorrer has just been awarded a $2M NSF grant as part of the Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) program for Engineering projects. Of the 15 ENG/EFRI awards for 2012, 3 were in the category of Synthetic Biorefineries research: "the large-scale use of micro-organisms that harness solar energy to produce chemicals and fuels from carbon dioxide." Rorrer's lab will study diatom photosynthesis as a means of creating biofuel, as well as two other bioengineered products. Diatoms are a type of algae with a unique biosynthetic ability to extract silicate from the ocean to create cell walls of nanostructured silica. According to the grant proposal, the OSU team will identify cellular processes and cultivation strategies towards the design of scalable systems for a future diatom-based photosynthetic biorefinery.

Oregon State researchers recently discovered DNA in a nematode, a type of roundworm, that may provide an insight into the mechanisms of human aging. The researchers found a specific portion of DNA within the mitochondria of the nematode which displayed the characteristics of "selfish" DNA, in other words, DNA which actually hurts the animal's chances of survival. Scientists have previously found instances of selfish DNA occurring in plants, but this is the first example found in an animal. “We weren’t even looking for this when we found it, and at first we thought it must be a laboratory error,” said Dee Denver, Oregon State associate professor of zoology (photo left courtesy of OSU). "Selfish DNA is not supposed to be found in animals."

Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) recently received $245,115 in new NIH science research funding for a study of the effectiveness of two drugs commonly used to restore heart function in cardiac arrest victims. Researchers will be determining whether the drugs Amiodarone and Lidocaine actually improve cardiac arrest patients' chance of survival, and if so which is more effective. These drugs are both used to restore the loss of rhythmic and regular heartbeats that is a common cause of cardiac arrest, though their overall effectiveness at improving survival among patients has not been well documented. Typically first responders pick one or the other, but their decisions are not based on hard comparative evidence of the drugs' benefits.

The University of Oregon is poised to celebrate completion of Phase II building construction on its Lokey Science Complex on the Eugene campus this fall with the opening of the $65M Lewis Integrative Science Building. The 100,000sf science building will have fully one-third of its space devoted to labs and will be home to strategic research clusters related to the human brain, molecular biology, nanotechnology, and solar energy. It will bring together researchers from across the spectrum of brain research from cognitive development to rehabilitation as well as molecular biologists studying cancer and stem cells and materials scientists working in green nanotechnology and solar energy. The Lewis Building is expected to earn LEED platinum certification, and it will be the most expensive science facility ever built at the University of Oregon. The fundraising effort is nearing completion and labs will be filling with new equipment and supplies soon in preparation for the fall move-in.

The NIH has funded a five-year, $21 million Integrative Neuroscience Initiative on Alcoholism grant to support a multi-site consortium led by Oregon Health & Science University researchers Kathleen A. Grant and Betsy Ferguson. The grant represents the second competitive renewal for the INIA consortium (founded in 2001), which is made up of 15 lead investigators from 10 institutions in the United States and Europe.  OHSU's share of the current funding is $6.3M. Dr. Grant is the head of neuroscience at the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC), where Dr. Ferguson is an associate scientist. The Division of Neuroscience at the ONPRC conducts research aimed at identifying and defining fundamental aspects of the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying nervous system function.

We’ve been writing a lot lately about real estate and the complexities of urban life science expansion.  In terms of ingenuity and multi-agency collaboration, Portland’s expansion into the South Waterfront area in order to expand Oregon Health & Science University’s capacity and facilitate collaboration with other Oregon universities is uniquely impressive. Recognizing long ago that OHSU’s location offered limited growth opportunity in terms of surrounding real estate, officials looked down the hill to Portland’s South Waterfront district, and at a derelict salvage yard in particular.  There was space there, between two bridges, but would it be a valuable expansion if researchers and students couldn’t get between the two campuses easily? How to convince the principal players that the locale would work?