Science Market Update

Two distinct hallmarks of the 21st Century that have already become central to our lives and business thinking are a reliance on social networking and a concern about sustainability.  So perhaps it's not surprising (though it is remarkable) that a government agency has developed a website for shared knowledge about biofuel resources.

[Photo courtesy of University City Science Center]

National Jewish Health in Denver is the #1 respiratory hospital in the United States and the only institution in the world dedicated exclusively to respiratory, cardiac, and immune diseases.  Researchers at NJH's Center for Genes, Environment & Health (CGEH) have recently published the results of an important study that identifies a genetic variant for ideopathic pulmonary fibrosis and its cousin familial interstitial pneumonia.  Both are fatal diseases involving progressive lung scarring; some 40,000 people die annually of the little-understood and untreatable conditions.

Catastrophe has a way of catalyzing need and resources.  The 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has made University of Alabama (UAB) scientists' expertise in the biomarine environment off their coast particularly valuable.  BP has pledge up to $500 Million to study the effects of the spill, and some of that funding is making its way to biomarine research projects at UA-Birmingham through Alabama's Marine Environmental Science Consortium (MESC) and the larger Gulf Research Initiative Open Research Program.  The MESC has distributed $5 Million in Rapid Response Funds already, and 16 UAB researchers have received $308,344 in grants to fund pilot projects identified by and applied for at the UAB Gulf Oil Spill Summit last fall.

Fragile X Syndrome is the leading cause of inherited mental illness,  ranging from learning disabilities to more severe cognitive or intellectual disabilities, including autism.  Connecticut pharmaceutical company Marinus, Inc. has developed the synthetic neurosteroid Ganaxolone for the treatment of Fragile X Syndrome (FXS), epilepsy, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  Now researchers at UC Davis have been awarded a $3 Million molecular biology research grant by the Department of Defense to study the effects of the drug on FXS specifically.

Proton beam therapy is a form of targeted cancer treatment that has fewer debilitating side effects than traditional radiotherapy. The Mayo Clinic is a world-class center for cancer research and care in the Midwest, and now it will expand its holdings to include two new proton beam therapy centers, one in Rochester and another at its sister clinic in Phoenix.  The type of advanced pencil beam scanning therapeutic equipment that the Mayo Clinic Proton Beam Therapy Center will use is very expensive (the two facilities will have a combined total cost of over $400M for 8 treatment rooms), and the $100 Million outright gift from philanthropist Richard O. Jacobson made earlier this year will go a considerable way toward advancing the project's progress.

Intensity-modulated proton beam therapy is less damaging to the cancer patient's healthy cells (surrounding the cancerous growth) because:

1. Beam can be directed precisely at the tumor and
2. Modulated intensity means beam will not pass through tumor.

[Images above right: Irradiation of nasopharyngeal carcinoma by photon therapy (left) and proton therapy (right), courtesy of Wikipedia]

New Sorenson Molecular Biotechnology Building at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City: due to open in 2012. 

On March 24, UC Berkeley's Center for Green Chemistry held its first interdisciplinary national conference, sponsored by the Canadian non-profit Philomathia Foundation.  The event sold out.  Speakers included faculty from across the UC Berkeley campus (including the Chancellor), as well as:

The biotechnology sector is growing and graduate students in the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Master's Program in Biotechnology are ready to build their careers (and Birmingham's biotech future) on that promise.  While there are several innovative business-science hybrid master's programs that have emerged recently in the US (see our two April 12 blogs), UA's is the first in the South and unique in its approach.

More than a management training program for scientists (which it is), the UA Biotechnology degree course pairs students with UA-based startups that need management expertise and business labor (for filing patents, for example).  This win-win situation is facilitated through a partnership with the UAB Research Foundation which manages the University's intellectual property and promotes its most promising technologies.  Graduates of the program have real hands-on business experience and can now attract biotechnology businesses to Birmingham.  In fact, the program was initiated two years ago in response to Birmingham losing a bid to host a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant.  The company cited fears that the city would not be able to produce the trained workforce it needed.

1. UCSD Health Sciences Biomedical Building due August 2013
2. UCSD Sulpizio Cardiovascular Center opening in May
3. UCSD Translational Research Building to break ground soon
4. UCSD Jacobs Medical Center due to open in 2016

[Photo courtesy of UCSD]

Cows get pneumonia, or bovine respiratory disease, and it kills more than a million of them each year, making BRD the leading cause of (accidental) death for beef and dairy cattle.  That translates to a loss of about $692 Million annually.  To combat this loss, the USDA has just invested $9.75 Million in a 5-year project to come up with genomic and management approaches to the BRD problem.

The UC Davis Animal Science research team working on the bovine pneumonia study will receive $2.6 Million of the USDA funds awarded through the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program.  UCD team members include:

The stem cell research programs University of Washington have received $24.6 million in new stem cell research funding from the National Institutes of Health (FY 2010 and 2011 to date). UW ranks 6th in the nation for total stem cell funding in this period behind several leading research universities including Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, and UC San Francisco (to read more on UCSF stem cell research see our UCSF blog).

Wallace Coulter was not only a fantastically successful inventor of diagnostics equipment, but through the philanthropic Coulter Foundation he continues to promote medical innovation at over 10 universities across the US.  Duke University has just received a $10 million commitment to permanently endow its Coulter Translational Partnership in biomedical engineering, which, combined with grants from the Fitzpatrick Foundation and other Duke resources brings the program's endowed resources to $20 million, securing its long term future.

Duke's program is one of several translational partnerships funded by the Coulter Foundation to see biomedical engineering research turned into needed clinical products that benefit people. Started in 2005, the Duke Coulter Translational Partnership provides grants to teams of biomed engineers and medical school researchers to create "a valuable entrepreneurial pipeline" for new companies commercializing Duke technology.

The University of California at Davis has $276.7 Million in active NIH grants.  $53.4 Million of that has been awarded in 2011 alone, and awards continue to be announced for the current fiscal year.  Total NIH funding for the School of Medicine has more than doubled in the past nine years, bringing it to 37th place among 134 medical schools in the United States.

What would the holidays be without food?  This obscure little blog seems ripe for reprint about now...(12/23/2011)

[Photo of UIC campus courtesy of UIC website]

In 2009 the University of Michigan bought the shuttered Pfizer campus adjacent to its North (Ann Arbor) Campus for $108 Million.  The 174-acre, 30-building, 2-million-square-feet of research and administrative space have since been renamed the North Campus Research Complex, and the Complex' Venture Accelerator has just opened with five startup companies as tenants.  The 16,000 sf Accelerator facility is designed to fast-track new businesses based on UM technology by providing lab and office space, IT infrastructure, business services, and mentorship.  The Accelerator is a branch of U-M's Tech Transfer, which also moved onto the new campus, along with the Business Engagement Center and the Medical School Business Development.

Doug Walker, the Board chair of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, recently announced that the center has acquired a new facility that will house new offices and laboratory space.

A new research study at  Oregon Health Science University - OHSU is probing new treatment options for newborn infants who receive the HIV virus from their mothers.

Over the past year Washington State's Professional Science Master's program has enjoyed incredible success. The program was launched last May in the School of Molecular Biosciences and was designed to train students in successful business practices and bioscience simultaneously. The program was the first of its kind in the state and was so successful that WSU plans to expand it into its several new research programs including bio-products, environmental sustainability and health informatics.

The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor is a major research institution, ranked among the top five nationally in spending, according to NSF statistics.  Yet in today's economy, having funding and prestige is not enough: the future lies in getting research out into the world, and increasingly the way to do this is through strong entrepreneurship.  To build those science marketing skills, UM has developed a Master's degree program in Entrepreneurial Education that combines coursework from the business and engineering schools to teach creative young business-scientists how to "give their inventions legs."

The State of Minnesota is funding 5 medical research studies to be carried out by the Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics, a collaborative between the state's largest medical research institutions: the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis) and the Mayo Clinic (Rochester). This latest round of 2-year grants totals $3.5 Million.  If successful, the 5 projects will either produce results that qualify them for futher federal or private funding, or produce intellectual property that can be marketed.

The research projects focus on:

In two or three years you should be able to get your personal genome sequenced for $1,000.  Who will win the race to offer the service at this price remains to be seen, but the more important question might be: How will this information be valuable?  What will personalized medicine mean for you?  For science?  Ideally the DNA profile would help your doctor analyze your risk for disease and tell you something about your health ancestry. There is already at least one company that will sell you a plan to analyze your DNA and keep you posted on information that becomes available related to your genome characteristics.

The Hartwell Foundation funds early-stage biomedical research projects that specifically address children's diseases.  Of the 12 Hartwell Individual Biomedical Awards given out this year, an impressive three went to scientists at the UCSD School of Medicine: Dr. Jack Bui, Dr. Pamela Itkin-Ansari, and Dr. Adriana Tremoulet.  Each will receive $100,000 a year for three years to support direct research costs.

The National Institutes of Health has awarded the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center $4.8 million in new stem cell research funding.  The four-year grant will go to research the effect of a patient's DNA on the outcome and success of a stem cell transplant.

If your territory includes the Greater Los Angeles Area and you have products or services of interest to the life science research market, you can reach over 700 of the top thought leaders in academic science research at this week's upcoming vendor fair.  Researchers actively seeking solutions to their research challenges will be attending this event.

Dr. Robert Kormos at the University of Pittsburgh's McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine has secured $13.3 million in funding from the NIH's Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to carry out a 5-year heart device study in collaboration with researchers at the University of Michigan.  Both the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Michigan's Center for Circulatory Support are leaders in research on and implantation of artificial hearts (also known as mechanical circulatory support devices). 

In 2010, this vendor show on campus at the University of Pennsylvania attracted over 500 academic researchers. 

The Jane Goodall Institute was established in 1977 when young researcher Anne Pusey returned from Africa with boxes of Goodall's hard data: handwritten observations of chimp behavior from what would become the Gombe Preserve in Tanzania.  Those boxes went with Pusey to the University of Minnesota, where the long process of curation and (eventual) digitation began.  The Goodall Institute now has its headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, where it focuses on education, community development, and conservation, as well as research and management of its chimp sanctuary in the Congo.

The University of Washington has received a 1$ million, three year grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation to fund research on tiny nanotech computer implants.

If committing to funding a new research building weren't daunting enough, try doing it on a dense urban campus in an historic neighborhood in our nation's capital.  This is the situation of Georgetown University, located in northwest Washington DC on the Potomac River.  The Georgetown Independent aptly calls the challenge a "massive logistical nightmare." Yet buildings do go up, and more are always under construction and in the pipeline, as evidenced by the latest Campus Plan submitted by the University to the city's Planning Department yesterday.