Science Market Update

Thanks to the stimulus package, the University of Oregon in Eugene was awarded a record $135.6 million in new competitively awarded external funding in 2010.

Top researchers at the University of Oregon have received $1 million in new research funding from the W.M. Keck Foundation to apply the study of genomics to the progression of cancer. The new genomics science research is being led by Hui Zong of the UO Institute of Molecular Biology and William Cresko of the UO Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

The University of Nevada, Reno recently unveiled the new MacLean  Astronomy Building and Observatory Complex. The new buildings were largely made possible by new funding from the Jack Van Sickle Foundation which gave generously to UNR in 2010.

UNR Scientist, Qizhen Li, of University of Nevada, Reno's Materials Engineering Department, recently received a highly competitive, five-year NSF CAREER Award for a personal research project.

David Baker, a computational biology scientist from the University of Washington, has developed a revolutionary method for designing proteins.

All three major Oregon research universities (the University of Oregon, Oregon State, and Oregon Health and Science University) received record amounts of new funding during fiscal year 2009-2010. This record increase will likely spur the development of new programs and encourage new research innovation in Oregon.

Oregon State University Scientists Rich Carter, a professor of chemistry, and Hua Yang, a postdoctoral research associate have developed a new organic catalyst. This "organocatalyst" could make drug production worldwide more environmentally friendly, cost effective, and efficient.

New stem cell research by University of Wisconsin scientists may lead to new therapies and possible cures for numerous genetic heart diseases. The UW research team was led by Craig January and Tim Kamp, professors of medicine at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. These researchers are the first to use stem cells to study the genetic mechanisms in heart disease. 

When the American Medical Women's Association (AMWA) met in Washington DC for their annual meeting two weeks ago, they gave the 2011 Women in Science Award to Dr. Katherine L. Wisner of the University of Pittsburgh for her important work on perinatal mental health over the past 20+ years.   Dr. Wisner is one of over 200 faculty members of the Department of Psychiatry at Pitt and its affiliate hospital, the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic (WPIC) of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). 

PatientsLikeMe is an online networking and data-sharing resource for people suffering from chronic illnesses who want to talk about the effectiveness of treatments and medications.  It is not a chat group or a non-profit but a business run by MIT engineers that offers a service to patients and science alike by selling data it collects from subscribers to interested biomedical entities.  Two recent announcements by the company make it clear they have jumped up an order of importance in what they do and have demonstrated a use for social media that is potentially game-changing:

A recent ruling by a federal appeals court will allow the Obama Administration to continue funding embryonic stem cell research. The ruling reversed a previous injunction by a district court judge which would have frozen federal funding for stem cell science research. This new ruling ends months of uncertainty for numerous scientists who rely on federal funding for their stem cell research.

The Obama Administration praised the 2-1 stem cell court ruling and reaffirmed their commitment to promoting and advancing embryonic stem cell research. White house spokesman Nick Papas hailed the court's decision saying, "Responsible stem cell research has the potential to treat some of our most devastating diseases and conditions."

A grant from the National Science Foundation has provided $4.8 million research funding for UC Riverside enabling researchers Susan R. Wessler, and Jason Stajich to investigate  various rice cultivars using genome sequencing and seeing how these cultivars react to drought, disease, and flooding.  

The rice plants are mutagenized with Transposable Elements (TE), which identify interesting characteristics within a particular strain and help locate specific elements causing a characteristic within that gene.  

With the current severe weather and climate stresses on agriculture as a whole, this research is very timely, rice being one of the main global food staples .  Additionally the  funding will  allow researchers to generate resources in the scientific community, enabling them to follow TE movement and find out how traits are determined by the insertion of a TE in a gene.

UC Riverside researchers will be making extensive use of a Solexa/Illumina HiSeq2000 instrument  on several rice cultivars, to  measure gene expression for each cultivar.  The instrument is part of the UC Riverside Institute for Integrative Genome Biology (IIGB) genomics core, where UC Riverside genomics studies are conducted.

For more detailed information about this research click here

For Southern California Researchers
If you are interested in seeing latest generation lab equipment, finding out about  new lab techniques, networking with other researchers and science industry professionals, or comparing prices on lab supplies get more UC Riverside BioResearch Product FairTM Event information or register today for this event.

For Science Lab Vendors
If you are interested in providing assistance in the form of lab equipment or supplies for the UC Riverside researchers and would like to meet with them click here to find out when and where you can meet them.

Photo credit:
Worakit Sirijinda / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Oregon University System plans to build a new life science building on Portland's South Waterfront. The building will be shared by Portland State, The University of Oregon, Oregon State, and OHSU. The main tenant will be OHSU which plans to house several of its science research programs in the new space.

The University of California, Irvine runs a world-class academic Medical Center in Orange County, and it's getting even better with these recent research and facilities developments:

Until November of 2008, the State of Michigan had some of the most restrictive laws in the country governing stem cell research.  Dr. Eva Feldman of the University of Michigan went to California on a grant from philanthropist/benefactor Alfred Taubman to do her stem cell research toward treatment of Lou Gehrig's disease.  Then Michigan voters passed Proposal 2, allowing researchers to use human embryonic stem cell lines derived from surplus fertility clinic embryos.  After a year debating the ethical and legal angles of this new stem cell opportunity, UM came out with guidelines to direct and permit its researchers to move forward using cells from surplus blastocysts.  Dr. Feldman returned to UM, where she is Professor of Neurology and currently conducting the first human trial of a stem cell treatment for Lou Gehrig's disease.  [Photo of Dr. Feldman courtesy of Michigan Research Corridor]

New research led by IBM Research-Almaden and the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology has developed a new treatment for drug-resistant superbugs such as Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The new MRSA treatment uses tiny nanotechnology structures to attack the cell membrane of MRSA bacteria. 

Despite fears of massive cuts to vital Life Science and Bioscience research funding, the National Institutes of Health emerged relatively unscathed from the recent budget negotiations on Capitol Hill.

Despite calls to for massive cuts in the federal science funding budget, President Obama has remained committed to an increase in new biotechnology research funding for federal institutions such as the NIH, NSF, CDC, and FDA.

The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has received $1 million in new cancer research funding from the W.M. Keck Foundation to study the link between common viruses and cancer.

“Plants are amazing biochemists as they make hundreds of thousands of compounds, yet we don’t know how most of these chemical compounds are produced by the plant or the role of these metabolites in the natural history of species across the kingdom.”

Michigan State University professor of molecular biology and biochemistry Robert Last (above photo and quote) and his team of researchers recently received a $4.1M grant from the National Science Foundation to study Andean Tomatoes and the chemicals they naturally produce.  Professor Last's research focuses on the tiny hairs on plants, called trichomes that are related to the plant's smell and taste through the sticky, pungent compounds they produce. 

Understanding the full chemical and genetic makeup of the tomato plant, and especially its natural defenses, may lead to improvements in agricultural pest and disease control and higher crop yields.

In 1995 Utah chemical industrialist Jon Huntsman donated $151M—$100M directly from family funds—to the University of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City to create a top-notch cancer center bearing his family's name: The Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI).  Further contributions over the years brought Huntsman support to $300M. Now the family has made another gift to the Center in the amount of $41M, which HCI says will be used to hire more researchers and acquire new treatment technology.

This donation comes at a time when the Huntsman Cancer Hospital is nearing the end of a huge expansion project. The original building, completed in 1999, contains 242,000 square feet; the $102M extension will add 156,000 square feet and include 50 in-patient beds along with increased space for diagnostic and examination rooms. [Photo courtesy of HCI]

The HCI Hospital expansion is part of the University of Utah's revised master plan for its 1534-acre campus, which includes many new buildings (see our recent blog on the Sorenson Molecular Biotechnology Research Building due to open soon).  According to the master plan, the University of Utah will spend over $1 Billion on new facilities and upgrades, $780M worth of which is already under construction and $45M more been approved.