Bioengineers at the University of California San Diego have come up with a novel way of removing dangerous toxins from the bloodstream using biomimetic nanosponges. These tiny clean-up particles work by posing as red blood cells, which serves both to evade the body's immune system response to foreign invaders and to attract the toxins to themselves instead of to actual red blood cells. When the toxins have all attached themselves to the nanosponges, they are processed out through the liver without harming the body. The research into this promising therapy comes out of the Zhang Lab in the Jacobs School of Engineering, where in 2011 they pioneered the red blood cell disguise technology for cloaking cancer drug cocktails, allowing the drugs much more time in the body to target diseased cells. Dr. Liangfang Zhang is also on the research faculty of the UCSD Moores Cancer Center.
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Tags: 2014, CA, University of California San Diego, 2013, nanoparticle, Nanobiotechnology, nanotechnology, Nanoscience, Southwest, California, University of California, Cell Research, San Diego, SDVS, UCSD, Biotechnology Vendor Showcase
The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington Medicine in Seattle are pleased to announce the arrival soon of Dr. Eric Holland, a world-class brain cancer research scientist and neurosurgeon, who will head up the Human Biology Division at Hutch as well as the Alvord Brain Tumor Center at UW. The eminent MD/PhD is being lured away from Manhattan's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where he directs the MSKCC brain tumor center and has his lab within the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program, where his team studies the molecular mechanisms underlying the development of central nervous system tumors. In addition to being the recipient of many prestigious awards over years, Holland brings with him over $3M a year in NIH/NCI funding. It's unclear how many of his 13 lab members will follow him across the country to take on new challenges at Hutch and UW.
Tags: 2014, 2013, Northeast, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Washington, UW, University of Washington, WA, Northwest, cancer research, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, brain research, Neuroscience, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Funding, Front Line event, Seattle, Frontline Event, Hutch, Cancer Center
Green chemistry refers to a number of processes and practices that minimize the toxic or hazardous effects of chemicals in the environment, the lab, or the manufacturing plant. One way to go green is to cut down on the use of dangerous solvents in reactive processes, thereby reducing waste and improving lab safety. Though sometimes a less toxic catalyst or reagent can be employed from the outset, reused, or made inert eventually, another way to get a chemical reaction is to apply physical force instead. Called mechanochemistry, it involves the application of mechanical engineering to chemistry. Instead of adding a solvent, agitation is used to achieve chemical synthesis.
Tags: 2014, Midwest, 2013, Ohio, University of Cincinnati, catalysts, green chemistry, chemistry research, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Cincinnati, lab research, OH, UCinci, NSF, UC, green chemistry shows, green chem
The NIH has just announced $5.3M in two new awards through the Autism Centers of Excellence (ACE) program to support autism research studies led by two University of California investigative teams, at UCLA and the UC Davis Medical Center MIND Institute. ACE funding is earmarked for large, multi-disciplinary studies into the origins of autism spectrum neurological disorders and avenues for their treatment. In the case of the two latest awardees, one is a clinical behavioral study and one is a study of genetic variants. The $5.3M is initial one-year funding, with extensions of up to five years. The ACE program includes both centers and networks. Centers are made up of multiple investigators at one site working together on a specific research problem; networks include investigative teams from different sites engaged in a focused study. Both UCLA and UC Davis are ACE centers and will lead the current research projects, though in collaboration with colleagues at other research institutions, namely Harvard, UW, Vanderbilt, Emory, Johns Hopkins, and Yale. As with all ACE research, data and findings are collected centrally by the NIH to maximize their availability to the larger research community.
Tags: 2014, CA, 2013, Southwest, Los Angeles, Autism, LAVS, UCDMC, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Funding, UCLA, Genetics, Research, Sacramento, Davis, NIH funding, UC Los Angeles, UC Davis, Biotechnology Vendor Showcase Event
Synthetic biology is the application of engineering principles to altering components of biological systems, like genes and cells, towards creating new and revised living things (watch the video below for an introduction). It's arguably the most radical, cutting-edge laboratory science field today, and one that calls on its scientists to grapple with ethics as well as biotechnology. At the forefront of this life science revolution is the University of California Berkeley-led consortium SynBERC: the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center, with partner colleagues at UCSF, Stanford, MIT, and Harvard. Just this week, principal synbio investigators from these institutions came together with industry scientists and ethicists for a symposium on the UCB campus titled Programming Life: the revolutionary potential of synthetic biology, co-sponsored by SynBERC and Discover Magazine. Whether we are going to continue down the road of reengineering life was not the question so much as how we will go about that delicate task and what the implications and promises are of such a bold project.
Tags: 2014, CA, 2013, University of California Berkeley, biofuels, synthetic biology, Southwest, California, University of California, genetic engineering, Berkeley, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Research, Berkeley Labs, UCBerk, UC Berkley
Everyone wants to live healthier, if only to avoid the distress and danger of having serious problems like diabetes and blocked arteries. Unfortunately that's not always enough to get Americans to eat better, even when they know what's at stake. Last month a much publicized study in the New England Journal of Medicine confirmed that a "Mediterranean diet" is a clear winner for heart health, but try wrestling a steak away from a Texan with the lure of olive oil, nuts, and fruit instead. That's why University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio (UTHSCSA) research scientist Reto Asmis is studying the biochemical basis of the Mediterranean diet with the aim of producing a food supplement that does what the healthy diet does without a wholesale change in our eating behavior.
Tags: 2014, 2013, cardiovascular research, heart disease, food science, Mediterranean Diet, University of Texas, Translational Research, Texas, Southwest, UT Health Science Center San Antonio, UTxSA, University of Texas Health Science Center, BioResearch Product Faire Event, San Antonio, TX
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center cell engineering researchers and their clinician colleagues have been in the news recently for a successful experimental cell therapy. Called targeted immunotherapy, a patient's T cells are genetically altered in the lab, then reintroduced with the directive to target and kill cancer cells. The treatment was carried out on a group of adults who all suffered from a rapidly progressing form of leukemia that had not responded to chemotherapy. All five went into remission after the novel cell treatment, and three have stayed that way for a number of months. Results of the ongoing clinical trial appeared in the March 20 online edition of the journal Science Translational Medicine, along with an article in the New York Times.
Tags: 2014, Rockefeller University, 2013, Northeast, Leukemia, immunotherapy, cancer research, New York, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Cancer Treatment, Immune System, Cell Research, RockU, BioResearch Product Faire Event, NY, New York City, MSKCC
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.
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Americans are making, drinking, and exporting more wine than ever before. A hobby for some and serious business for others, winemaking consumes a whole lot of grapes every year (in the neighborhood of 4 million tons in the US alone), and that number is growing. But as with any type of industry, there's a certain industrial waste to be managed. In the case of winemaking, it's called pomace, and up to now vintners have been paying to have the pulpy mass hauled away. Now food science researchers at Oregon State University in Corvallis have come up with a process to make pomace into useful products, from biodegradable fiberboard to a nutritional foodstuff, which is the kind of earth-friendly, business-savvy research from which OSU is likely to profit nicely when the technology is commercialized internationally.
Tags: 2014, 2013, Oregon State University, food science, Wine Grape Pulp, Northwest, Oregon, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Research, Front Line event, OR, Corvallis, Corvalis, ORSTU, Pomace
Dr. Thomas Jessell is a developmental neurobiologist at Columbia University Medical Center and the latest recipient of the Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience, which includes a $100,000 award. In the Jessell Lab in the Hammer Health Sciences Building, researchers study the vertebrate central nervous system to understand how neurons become encoded at the embryonic level, particularly in the spinal cord. The Scolnick Prize singles out Jessell's work for identifying signaling molecules and transcriptional code that establish a linkage between functional circuitry and motor behavior. Also a member of Columbia's Motor Neuron Center, which is dedicated to the study of motor neuron diseases like ALS, Dr. Jessell is a faculty member in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and part of the larger Columbia Neuroscience interdisciplinary research community. He will travel to Boston in April to accept the prize and deliver a lecture (see image at right). The Scolnick Prize is given out by the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. According to McGovern chairman Robert Desimone, from a recent CUMC press release:
Tags: 2014, 2013, Northeast, Scolnick Prize, New York, Columbia University, Neuroscience, Columbia, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Research, Stem Cell, New York City, Columbia University Medical Center, Northeast Region, lab supplier, NYColumbia University