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.
The Highlander Union building at night/ Photo credit: Carlos Puma
Interesting highlights on new building and development at UC Riverside include:
- UC Riverside received a $2.8 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to provide the stem cell research center with three years' worth of operating expenses.
- UC Riverside opened the 58,000sq.ft. research building for its future medical school on March 18, 2011. Students are to be enrolled in the medical school program in the fall of 2012. (See our previous free science market update information resource: http://info.biotech-calendar.com/bid/59354)
Life science professionals can take note of an even more recent development in UC Riverside’s up and coming research growth trajectory.
UC Riverside’s Institute for Integrative Genome Biology has opened and researchers actively engaged in research programs including recently celebrating a funding victory for SNP research on campus (SNPs: single nucleotide changes or polymorphisms) scored by IIGB researcher Frances Sladek who received a $1.5 million grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health. This particular grant will support a four-year research to study variability in individuals’ responses to drug treatments. Frances Sladek, Professor a of Cell Biology, focuses on Regulation of Gene Expression; Tissue-specific Gene Expression; Nuclear Hormones; Endocrinology at UC Riverside.
Sladek’s lab will use protein-binding microarrays, to identify SNPs in DNA sequences to which nuclear receptors bind and will examine nuclear-receptor-DNA binding and how SNPs influence the process. The goal with this research is to personalize medical treatments for patients and ensure that the drugs prescribed for each patient will be able to target nuclear receptors more effectively and lead to more effect therapies for disease.
The key players in the research team include:
Frances Sladek-Professor of Cell Biology; Toxicologist, Cell Biology and Neuroscience
Tao Jiang, a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and the grant’s co-principal investigator;
Thomas Girke, an Associate Professor of Bioinformatics;
A least 2 full time post docs at UC Riverside also support this program.
Biotechnology Calendar, Inc. looks forward to holding its 7th annual Riverside BioResearch Product Faire™ Event on the UC Inland Empire campus on August 22, 2012. We are a full service event marketing and planning company producing on-campus, life science research tradeshows nationwide for the past 20 years. We plan and promote each event to bring the best products and services to the best research campuses across the country. If you are interested in attending UCR or for more information, click the buttons below: