Science Market Update

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is a major funding agency for stem cell research in the Golden State. Since voters approved the establishment of the agency in 2004, the CIRM has spent billions on research and facilities with the aim of making California the stem cell capital of the US. Now, in a move to advance that research mission even further, the agency has announced awards of $32M to investigators and stem cell companies to create a biobank of diseased cell lines for the use of researchers around the world. Called the Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (hiPSC) Initiative Awards, the project will generate and ensure the availability of high quality disease-specific hiPSC resources for disease modeling, target discovery and drug discovery and development for prevalent, genetically complex diseases. 

The tighter funding gets, the more likely it is that young investigators pursuing big ideas will get passed over and science grant money will stay with safer, more established projects. Fortunately there are exceptions to that general rule, including a new program established by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation specifically to support select pioneering research projects that aim to unlock fundamental questions in biology. They recently awarded investigators from 5 prestigious US universities a total of $7.5M to pursue basic questions about the origins and mechanisms of cellular behavior. One of those 5 Distinguished Investigator awards, for $1.6M, is going to quantitative biologist and recent hire Suckjoon Jun, who works in physics and molecular biology at the University of California San Diego. His project title is "Cell-size control and its evolution at the single-cell level," and includes developing methods to perform long-term directed single-cell evolution experiments, as well as single-cell on-chip manipulation, sequencing, and mathematical modeling. 

The Brain Activity Map project could be the next big federal life science research endeavor, with no less a goal than the mapping of the entire living brain and all its neuronal activity. Like the Human Genome Project of the 90's, the not insignificant financial outlay is being presented as an investment that will net even bigger returns, both in terms of new technology and a vastly increased understanding of the mind. President Obama is expected to include the multi-billion dollar, decade-long funding in his upcoming budget proposal, and neuroscience research was a topic he addressed specifically in his recent State of the Union address.

2012 was a rough year for two important biorepositories. In October, Hurricane Sandy wiped out power to New York University's main research building, leading to the loss of precious biological samples and hundreds of lab rodents. Earlier in the year, the Harvard University Brain Resource Center at McLean Hospital in Boston suffered a similar catastrophe when a freezer failure led to the compromise of 147 brain tissue samples. 54 of those were specifically for autism research, and the loss has been felt all over the country. As a recent episode of NPR's Morning Edition reported, post-mortem brain tissue samples from autism sufferers are in short supply already and have been for a long time. That autism research is able to make major advances in understanding the neurodisorder is especially impressive given the shortage of these samples. One such triumph has come out of the University of California San Diego's Autism Center of Excellence within the UCSD School of Medicine.

With the advances in microscopy and digital imagery today, it's not unusual to find yourself looking at visual representations from the micro-world of the lab that are truly beautiful to behold, both for what they tell us about the science of life and on an aesthetic level as well. Some of the images might be said to qualify as art. In the case of Greg Dunn, PhD Neuroscience 2011 from the University of Pennsylvania, neural art has become his profession, and departments of neuroscience across the US have commissioned his large, metallic and ink visions for their offices, libraries, and reception halls. Influenced by Japanese art, completely self-taught, and still very much the scientist with his subject matter, Dunn's work is quite simply spectacular, and a great deal more than an homage to the neuron. 

[Award-winning, ultramodern and unique Sanford Consortium lab research building]

You may know that Biotechnology Calendar, Inc. has been bringing life science researchers and laboratory supply vendors together for 19 years now, but did you know that we began in San Diego with the UCSD Biotechnology Vendor Showcase™ Event?  This showcase is still one of the largest on-campus networking events for scientific research and lab product suppliers.  Each year it draws an enthusiastic annual following of Laboratory product supply companies and top-level research scientists.  This year the Biotechnology Vendor Showcase™ Event at the University of California, San Diego is expected to attract over 700 university scientists who will be there to actively seek new products and services for their life science research programs. 

Four years into the current recession, you might expect new building projects to be dwindling on the campus of the University of California San Diego, but you'd be wrong.  Yes, there are buildings that were planned back in the day and already have pre-2008 bond funding in place, but then there are newly-proposed (and approved) projects like the Center for Innovative Therapeutics, which will be an "innovator space" and "entrepreneurial life science hub" for translational research. The 100,000sf facility is slated for a 6.3-acre lot between the Moores Cancer Center and the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology that is part of the UCSD Science Research Park. Funding for the new building has reportedly already been secured and the design process is underway.

The 33rd Semiannual San Diego Biotechnology Vendor Showase™ Event (BVS) at UCSD on February 9th was a success with close to 700 attendees looking at a wide variety of new products. But new products weren't the only thing new at this event, Biotechnology Calendar, Inc. had their very first photo booth available for free fun photo strips to take home!

On the UCSD Scripps Institute of Oceanography (SIO) campus, an eco-modern 125,000sf science lab building is nearing completion and will have its grand opening in March 2012.  The Southwest Fisheries Science Center (SFSC) building project is also referred to as the La Jolla Laboratory Replacement Project because the previous building became unstable on the rocky coast several years ago during heavy storms and had to be closed down. The $56M new building project is being managed and financed by the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and will be home to 250-300 researchers. In concert with a second $26M science lab building across the street that just broke ground (read below), SIO is strongly positioned to remain one of the world’s elite marine institutions and a major federal research outpost.

"As the institution moves deeper into its second century of discovery, we continue to focus on building our ranks of talented people and supplying the state-of-the-art facilities and labs they need to thrive," writes SIO Vice-Chancellor Tony Haymet. "As we continue to attract the best-of-the-best, including six new assistant professor hires last year and more on the horizon, we remain committed to providing the modern space they need to conduct cutting edge research."