Science Market Update

The Texas Medical Center in Houston already has a well-respected trauma care program that includes Ben Taub Hospital and the Memorial Hermann Life Flight program. After the center announced the establishment of the Texas Trauma Institute, the Texas Medical Center’s ability to care for high-risk emergency patients made another great leap forward. According to The Memorial Examiner, the Texas Trauma Institute plans to dedicate its resources and advance research in ways that will continue to improve patient survival and quality of life for both  adult and pediatric trauma victims.

University of Cincinnati College of Medicine molecular geneticist Daniel Hassett (right) has made a name for himself as a determined researcher in the fight against cystic fibrosis (CF). He is also on the front line of bioscience research into creating "superbugs" that eat waste and generate energy, improving dramatically on the efficiency of traditional waste water treatment systems. In a radio interview on WVXU Cincinnati's Focus on Technology, commentator Ann Thompson describes the problem: the largest user of energy is wastewater treatment; the second largest user of water is energy production. If you can find a way to both clean water and generate electricity, you're in business.

The University of California Davis Medical Center recently discovered a new function of the body’s immune system through research on the protein HD6, also known as alpha-defensin 6. The discovery of HD6’s unique virus fighting methods helps researchers better understand how the body retaliates against bowel disease. 

Debates over the legitimacy of medical marijuana as a pain medication or appetite enhancer have tended to point to a lack of scientific studies proving the key substance is safe and effective. Patients and doctors have not always waited for that hard evidence, instead working from an empirical position that saw positive results from the ingestion of cannabinoids, the active ingredients, that lead them to make their own treatment decisions. But serious bioscience research, especially in the fields of pharmacology, infectious disease, and neuroscience, is showing surprising results in laboratory studies on cannabinoids, and those findings go far beyond the pain and appetite benefits to actually short-circuiting disease in late-stage AIDS patients.

We launched our 5-Star Program in 2011 as a way of acknowledging and rewarding the research lab equipment sales reps at our shows who go the extra mile to make the event a success by positively engaging researchers with attractive displays, equipment demonstrations, and of course their winning professional demeanor. We take note of the vendor tables that draw in the most research attendees, who stays to the very end, and which companies are most effectively driving their product message home through their overall approach.

Bone marrow was the first stem cell source to be widely used in clinical transplant surgery to replace damaged bone as a result of injury or chemotherapy. Unfortunately, bone marrow grafts are painful, and the appropriate donor is not always available when the need is there. Now research at the University of California Los Angeles' Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine has demonstrated successfully that stem cells from the patient's own fat (i.e. adipose tissue) can be made usable for bone damage treatment. Bone marrow is, after all, the soft, fatty tissue inside your bones that contains immature cells (aka stem cells) that give rise to all of your blood cells. So looking to fatty tissue from another part of the body to produce mesenchymal cells has made sense all along, though it has taken the efforts of several UCLA teams to show how it can be done in an animal model.

While magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners are most often associated with clinical diagnostics activities, their ability to visualize internal structures of the body in detail, especially soft tissues, makes MRI scanning machines extremely valuable for laboratory research scientists as well. So it's no small matter that an NIH equipment grant has made it possible for Cornell University in Ithaca to get one of its own, just last week, and establish the Cornell MRI Facility in Martha Van Rensselaer Hall. It's not just any scanner either, but a 3 Tesla GE Discovery 750, which provides noninvasive imaging with high signal-to-noise ratio and spatial resolution for structural and functional research involving small animals, humans, plants and biomedical materials. MRI technology does not involve radiation.

The University of Utah has explored and expoited a number of successful strategies to commercialize its intellectual capital in recent years. Their tech commercialization office is tireless in promoting its proprietary scientific solutions (see last month's blog: Science "Speed Teching" Drives Rapid Commercialization in Utah). But now we're starting to hear about another seriously innovative and fast-moving "laboratory" for cultivating new Salt Lake businesses, and it's a fairly new entity from the U of U's David Eccles School of Business called The Foundry. Instead of creating companies or corporate leaders, the Foundry is a hands-on training program designed to produce entrepreneurs who can identify a successful startup product/business and put together a qualified team to launch and run it.

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. 

A new NIH funded research project at Ohio State University has linked a certain protein in the heart to cardiac damage after chemotherapy. The study was lead by Govindasamy Ilangovan, Ohio State associate professor of internal medicine (photo courtesy of OSU), and received a total of $419,375 in funding from the NIH.

Science researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have received a $3.3 million, five-year grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to work on a medication to treat alcoholism and drug addiction, according to a UT Austin news article. The donating institute is a part of the National Institutes of Health.

Geneticists at the University of Arizona recently worked with 300 research scientists in 14 countries to crack the genetic code of tomatoes. The results of the study are expected to be used to lessen costs of tomato production and improve efforts at making tomatoes resistant to drought and pests. Founded in 2003 in Washington, the Tomato Genome Consortium includes scientists from Argentina, Belgium, China, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Spain and the United States. The results of the study were published as a cover story in the May 31 issue of the journal Nature.

A study by researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has revealed that a fast DNA sequencing technique called high-throughput sequencing (HTS) can greatly improve cancer relapse detection in patients.

The University of Southern California has a thriving regenerative medicine research headquarters at the Broad Center within the Keck School of Medicine. Established in 2006, the Center's $80M state-of-the-art building opened in 2010 to house eleven research teams and four core laboratories. In addition to seeking out therapeutics, though, a team of USC stem cell scientists is marrying their study of stem cell functioning to a more thorough understanding of regenerative biology as it happens naturally in many species of animal. Drs. Cheng-Ming Chuong, Randall B. Widelitz (right), Ping Wu, and Ting-Xin Jiang of the Department of Pathology discuss their lab research, which looks at stem cells in hair and feathers in particular, in a recent article published in the journal Physiology.

The development of successful vaccinations can be considered among the most important discoveries in medicine. It has caused significant reduction in the occurrence of several major diseases and has virtually eliminated some pathogens such as smallpox.  Even with previous developments, there is always the room for improvements.

The Madison Wisconsin has a vibrant and active life science research community that has been growing at an astonishing pace. To keep up with research needs, Madison area researchers have been finding new lab products for their  growing research programs  at the annual Madison BioResearch Product Fair™ Event. Interested life science professionals can access recent posts about research growth and development in the Madison area here where the following posts are available:

The University of California Irvine may be a youngster in the world of great universities (having been established as recently as 1965), but the Southern California campus has not wasted any time distinguishing its research and academic programs. In fact, according to a recent ranking by the UK's Times Higher Education, UC Irvine is #1 in the US and #4 in the world among the Times' Top 100 Universities Under 50 Years Old. The new ranking category was added to specifically look at the merits of campuses that were not old enough to compete with prestigious, long-established institutions in areas like alumni support and "reputation" but nonetheless were strong in research and publications. The 100 Under 50 recognizes current and future promise more than past success, and in that respect UCI is unmatched in the US.

You've heard the phrase "a force of nature," but we'd have to say that the University of Pittsburgh is clearly a force of science based on several recent news items: the University ranks in the Top 3 among public institutions of higher learning in the US (according to the NSF); they're in the Top 5 in federally financed research and development expenditures; and they've just had 3 of their faculty scientists elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. Chancellor Mark Nordenberg says of the first honor:

“The rankings emphasize yet again the enormous return on investment the Commonwealth [of Pennsylvania] receives through its support of this public institution while offering additional dramatic proof of the elite universities, both public and private, with which Pitt now keeps company.”

[Georgetown University and the Washington DC skyline, courtesy of the Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience]

 UC Riverside, once considered by some as the poor cousin to more established UC's, is now a thriving beehive of growth and activity in the areas of biomedicine and life science research. UC Riverside has always been strong in agriculture, business, and engineering; but UC Riverside had lacked the prestige that comes with being a medical training center, until now.  With a new medical faculty, a new medical school, new buildings, and new research programs, UC Riverside is on its way to becoming a world class research institute in the medical science field; a title previously reserved for its rich cousin's in Southern and Northern California.