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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Biotechnology vendors and lab suppliers in Cincinnati will find a well-funded and vibrant research marketplace at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, as recent NIH and NSF research funding statistics show. In 2012, the NIH awarded the university $73.9 million in research funding. The funding was distributed among a number of different projects in various science disciplines. Of the different departments awarded research funding at the University of Cincinnati, the money was given out as listed below:
Tags: 2014, Midwest, 2013, Ohio, Bioresearch, University of Cincinnati, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Funding, Research Funding, Cincinnati, NIH, research scientists, OH, UCinci, NSF, lab supplier, UC
The new Duke Cancer Center recently opened its doors to patients in February, according to a Duke University news article. The $235 million facility has been added to Duke University’s extensive list of LEED certified buildings. The environmentally-friendly features that helped the Duke Cancer Center achieve this certification include sustainable methods of energy use and transportation options. The center features large windows to let in natural sunlight, a rooftop garden, bike racks and showers for those who ride a bicycle to the center and occupancy sensors throughout the Duke Cancer Center that automatically turn lights off when a room is empty.
Tags: 2014, 2013, Duke University, North Carolina, Southern, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Research Funding, Durham, NC, Duke, Life Science Sales, Duke Cancer Center
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
In an effort to better combat the infamous human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have developed a solution that carries quite a sting. Utilizing a toxin found in bee venom, they have developed a nanoparticle that is quite effective at destroying the virus.
Tags: 2014, Midwest, 2013, Washington University, Missouri, WashU, WUSTL, nanoparticle, HIV, bee venom, melittin, BioResearch Product Faire Event, MO, St Louis, laboratory equipment, laboratory equipment suppliers
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:
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Biotechnology vendors and lab suppliers in Minnesota will find a well-funded life science research market at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, according to the most recent NIH and NSF research funding statistics. In 2012, the NIH awarded the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities $243.5 million in research funding. The funding was distributed among a number of different departments at the university. For the convenience of our readers, we have composed a list with the number of projects awarded money in each science research discipline and the total amount of funding for those projects:
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North Carolina appears to have a rich life science sales market when taking into account recent life science funding statistics. North Carolina Biotechnology Center in particular gave $2.9 million in loans and grants to life science companies and researchers during this second fiscal quarter. North Carolina Biotechnology Center has been funding life science researchers and startups since 1984, helping to make North Carolina the third largest biotechnology cluster in the United States. Ten different programs received awards based on entrepreneurship, technology and education. North Carolina now hosts over 500 life science companies and 58,000 employees who earn an average salary greater than $78,000.
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The tighter funding gets, the more likely it is that young investigators pursuing big ideas will get passed over and science grant money will stay with safer, more established projects. Fortunately there are exceptions to that general rule, including a new program established by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation specifically to support select pioneering research projects that aim to unlock fundamental questions in biology. They recently awarded investigators from 5 prestigious US universities a total of $7.5M to pursue basic questions about the origins and mechanisms of cellular behavior. One of those 5 Distinguished Investigator awards, for $1.6M, is going to quantitative biologist and recent hire Suckjoon Jun, who works in physics and molecular biology at the University of California San Diego. His project title is "Cell-size control and its evolution at the single-cell level," and includes developing methods to perform long-term directed single-cell evolution experiments, as well as single-cell on-chip manipulation, sequencing, and mathematical modeling.
Tags: 2014, CA, University of California San Diego, 2013, cell biology, Southwest, California, University of California, Cell Research, San Diego, SDVS, Funding, UCSD, Biotechnology Vendor Showcase
A microscopic worm by the name of Schistosoma mansoni has been long credited with a long lifespan and an uncanny knack for regeneration. Thanks to recent research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the worm’s secret is out: it utilizes adult stem cells to restore and replace itself at will.
Tags: 2014, Midwest, 2013, University of Illinois, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, UIUrbana, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Stem Cell, IL, parasite, laboratory product, UI Urbana