Science Market Update

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.

Duke University is one of the strongest medical science institutions in the nation, ranking in the top 10 of 144 major medical centers. The Duke Medical Center includes 96 buildings and sits on 210 acres with an annual operating revenue of $3.6 Billion. One of the leading organizations that continues to show growth and make major advances in the basic science and medical fields is the Department of Molecular genetics and Microbiology. This department came into being nearly 10 years ago, resulting from merging the Molecular Genetics and Micro Biology buildings at Duke back in 2002.

The University of Texas Board of Regents voted to give $30 million annually for eight years and $25 million annually thereafter to create a medical school in Austin. The university says its aim in creating the school is to participate more actively in medical research and draw in innovative faculty members and students.  The pledge is also aiming to bring more doctors, jobs, and improved healthcare to the city of Austin.

If you’ve heard of the University of California’s QB3 organization, you probably already know that their goal is to offer support to researchers in the biosciences and help them commercialize their work. What you may not know is just how successful the organization has been in its six years of existence. QB3, or the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, hit its six year mark in March. Since its beginning, QB3 and its partners have been integral in the inception of 65 new bioscience companies in an expanding network of incubators at UCSF Mission Bay, UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley. Together, these companies have earned over $230 million in capital.

Science researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are offering to sequence the DNA of 99 patients with rare genetic diseases in order to find the genetic alterations that made them ill. The new effort, known as the Rare99X Clinical Exome Challenge, will allow patients’ DNA to be decoded at the university’s Genomics and Pathology Services (GPS) at no cost to the patients or advocacy groups who represent them.

Led by the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, the six-week MyHeartMap Challenge is a trial science research project that uses crowd-sourcing to locate and gather information about automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) in Philadelphia. The challenge runs from January 31 to March 13, during which time participants can use a free app on their iPhones or Android phones to take pictures and document the location of publicly accessible AEDs in Philadelphia.

A dangerous situation presents itself when bacteria evolve defenses against antibiotics. Experience has shown us that it can be a discouraging catastrophe for public health when a new drug-resistant strain, or a gene that confers resistance, shows up in a new place, as happened when the NDM-1 gene (which is resistant to up to 14 drugs) showed up in New Delhi drinking water. Scientists are searching for a way to defeat that debilitating resistance, however, and every so often there's encouraging news: On February 4, North Carolina State University chemistry researchers published a study in which they said that they’ve found a molecule that makes antibiotics 16 times more effective against recently identified antibiotic-resistant “superbugs.”

Cornell University has recently created the Kevin M. McGovern Family Center for Venture Development in the Life Sciences and announced the center’s first occupant, Cornell’s native Glycobia Inc. According to INDY, the center makes its home on Ithaca’s campus in Weill Hall and was founded to help promising Cornell life science companies created by inventors at the university’s four campuses to develop their technologies, improve their businesses, and prepare them for substantial investment to help them grow. The center will work with regional, state and national leaders to help startups advance their businesses in a way where they will have important effects on the economy and the field of life sciences.

Dr. Jonathan Fielding and his wife, Karin Fielding, have donated a generous gift valued at $50 million to the UCLA School of Public Health. The gift is the greatest in the school’s 50-year history, and in appreciation of this, the school will be renamed the UCLA Jonathan and Karin Fielding School of Public Health.

A new science building and facility expansion are in the works at Texas A&M.  On February 9^th, the University System Board of Regents approved a $120 million building and facility expansion for the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in College Station, Texas. The new building will house high-tech laboratories and classrooms that are expected to facilitate learning by offering a superior science research atmosphere.