Science Market Update

Biotechnology vendors and lab suppliers in Cincinnati will find a well-funded and vibrant research marketplace at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, as recent NIH and NSF research funding statistics show. In 2012, the NIH awarded the university $73.9 million in research funding. The funding was distributed among a number of different projects in various science disciplines. Of the different departments awarded research funding at the University of Cincinnati, the money was given out as listed below:

If a person is suddenly seeing flashing lights, their fingers are tingling, and they are having trouble speaking, all these symptoms mean they are suddenly experiencing a migraine aura. Aura migraines affect more than 7,000,000 people in the United States, and are usually quite debilitating. Thanks to K.C. Brennan, M.D, a researcher at the University of Utah, we now know a lot more about what causes aura migraines.

The University of California system has five biomedical campuses currently: San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Irvine, and Davis/Sacramento. While each campus maintains a certain autonomy, the advantage to being part of a unified, statewide system is especially apparent when it comes to sharing resources such as biospecimens. In research studies that require data from large numbers of human blood or tissue samples, for instance, scientists rely on biobanks: an organized collection of human biological material and associated information stored for one or more research purposes. 

In the United States more than 15 million people suffer from food allergies. One of the deadliest is to peanuts. Peanut allergies are such a dangerous allergy that many public places have chosen to eliminate peanuts from the menu, rather than risk someone dying from an allergic reaction, such as some airlines and schools.  Researchers at National Jewish Health have found a new way to combat peanut and other food related allergic reactions, thus bringing the PB&J back to children everywhere.  This discovery comes at an opportune time because it seems that food allergies are on the rise.

No one escapes being affected by cancer. We all know someone, perhaps even a family member who has been diagnosed with cancer. According to the National Cancer Institute, more than 1.6 million people will be diagnosed with cancer in 2012. In fact, it is estimated that each person has a 41% chance of developing cancer during his or her lifetime. But new discoveries by researchers have started to change the outcome of a cancer diagnosis. In a recently published article in Nature, two researchers at CU boulder have found a possible solution hiding at the ends of our DNA. According to Professor Cech, "This is an exciting scientific discovery that gives us a new way of looking at the problem of cancer.” The researchers, Tom Cech and Leslie Leinwand, found the solution by studying how telomerase functions in our cells. In normal people, telomerase helps us keep our cells healthy and young. 

William O. Williams has the honor of being the first researcher to have a new drug tested at the UT Advance lab. His aerosolized drug is used for lung transplant patients to keep the immune system from rejecting the transplant. Dr. William’s lab explores a variety of delivery methods such as: depot drug delivery, oral drug delivery, pulmonary/nasal drug delivery, and aerosol device technology to optimize drug delivery depending upon its intended target.  

(Courtesy of the Center For Nano and Molecular Science, UTA)

One of the most prestigious scientific awards, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), has been awarded to not one University of Michigan Ann Arbor researcher, but three! This award, started in 1996 by President Bill Clinton, was founded to recognize "the most meritorious scientists and engineers whose early accomplishments show the greatest promise for assuring America's preeminence in science and engineering and contributing to the awarding agencies' missions," as per a White House press release. These scientists are nominated by eleven different US government departments and agencies including the Departments of Energy and Health and Human Services, as well as the National Science Foundation. 

In the search for early life we are going where we have never gone before...with newly-funded astrobiology research at the University of Illinois.

Washington University in St Louis (WUSTL) has just received a $2M research grant that will go towards combating a disorder which afflicts, often fatally, nearly 5.8 million Americans each year: heart failure. Heart failure is one of the leading causes of death in the US and although many promising drugs have been introduced over the years, we have yet to find a definitive treatment for the variety of cases that doctors encounter. This $2M NIH award wil go to a team of WUSTL scientists for basic research that will contribute to our understanding of heart disease and ideally lead to more effective treatment. The end goal of this research project is the design and construction of artificial tissue models of the heart, which will allow scientists to more quickly and efficiently test new drugs.