Washington University in St Louis (WUSTL) has just received a $2M research grant that will go towards combating a disorder which afflicts, often fatally, nearly 5.8 million Americans each year: heart failure. Heart failure is one of the leading causes of death in the US and although many promising drugs have been introduced over the years, we have yet to find a definitive treatment for the variety of cases that doctors encounter. This $2M NIH award wil go to a team of WUSTL scientists for basic research that will contribute to our understanding of heart disease and ideally lead to more effective treatment. The end goal of this research project is the design and construction of artificial tissue models of the heart, which will allow scientists to more quickly and efficiently test new drugs.
Tags: Bioscience research, Midwest, biomedical sciences, biomedical research, Bioresearch, Washington University, Missouri, WUSTL, heart disease, 2012, Biochemistry, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Research, NIH, MO, St Louis, BRPF, basic research funding
Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) recently received $245,115 in new NIH science research funding for a study of the effectiveness of two drugs commonly used to restore heart function in cardiac arrest victims. Researchers will be determining whether the drugs Amiodarone and Lidocaine actually improve cardiac arrest patients' chance of survival, and if so which is more effective. These drugs are both used to restore the loss of rhythmic and regular heartbeats that is a common cause of cardiac arrest, though their overall effectiveness at improving survival among patients has not been well documented. Typically first responders pick one or the other, but their decisions are not based on hard comparative evidence of the drugs' benefits.
Tags: Northeast, Oregon Health Sciences University, Oregon, 2012, Cardiac Arrest, Front Line event, NIH, OR, OHSU, Portland, BRPF
Sometimes it makes more sense to start from scratch and get it right than to try and retrofit and modernize older lab buildings. That's just what Ohio State University in Columbus decided to do for its Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Chemistry Building (CBEC). The new 225,000 gsf lab building broke ground last month and will replace 4 older facilities that had deferred maintenance and lacked proper floor-to-floor height, structural dimensions, and environmental stability. The New Koffolt Laboratories will be LEED-certifiable (possibly Silver) and will constitute a substantial upgrade with their science wet labs, computational research spaces, shared core laboratories, instructional spaces, and offices. The $126M project is due to be completed in September 2014.
Tags: Midwest, Ohio State University, Ohio, Bioresearch, University of Cincinnati, New research facilities, new science wet labs, 2012, Biochemistry, bio research, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Cincinnati, research laboratories, Columbus, OH, new construction, BRPF, OSU, UC
There's been a lot of promising news lately on the HIV/AIDS drug and treatment front, and more scientific solutions are being developed in labs every day. Bringing new vaccine and drug treatments to fruition has been challenging, though, as test animals such as mice do not have immune systems that are similar enough to ours to predict what would really happen in a human model. Now, at bio science research labs at the Ragon Institute in Boston, scientists have overcome that obstacle by engineering a mouse with what is essentially a human immune system. The Ragon study just published in Science Translational Medicine successfully demonstrated that these "humanized mice" do in fact respond like a human does when infected with HIV. This is a big step towards developing and testing new vaccines in the lab.
Tags: Harvard University, Northeast, AIDS Research, animal research, 2012, Immune System, Boston, BioResearch Product Faire Event, MA, Harvard, BRPF, scientist solutions
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.
Tags: Bioscience research, Midwest, Ohio, biomedical research, University of Cincinnati, genetic engineering, molecular ecology research, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Cincinnati, BRPF, research scientist
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:
Tags: University of Pittsburgh, Northeast, BioResearch Product Faire Event, scientific events, Pittsburgh, NSF, BRPF
Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) became the first academic medical center in the world when it was established in the Upper Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights in the 1920's. CUMC can also claim to have built New York City’s first university-related research park (in conjunction with the city and state)—housing the only biotechnology business incubator in the city: The Audubon Biomedical Science and Technology Park. The complex on CUMC's eastern border is currently made up of 3 research buildings, with sites and plans for 2 more. When completed, the park will contain over 600,000sf of research laboratory space and 1 million sf of overall usable space. Additionally, the biomedical science and technology park falls within the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, meaning special funding is available for businesses starting or relocating there.
Tags: biomedical research, Northeast, Biomedical expansion, New York, Columbia University, university research park, BioResearch Product Faire Event, research laboratories, New York City, BRPF
Rockefeller University, Weill Cornell Medical College, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center are not only neighbors along Manhattan's East River Drive, they're research collaborators in the Tri-Institutional Stem Cell Initiative (Tri-SCI). Established in 2005 with a gift from the Starr Foundation, that same charitable organization has just committed another $50M to stem cell research at the three adjacent campuses. In addition to funding researchers and laboratory equipment, Tri-SCI provides support for 3 research core facilities for the derivation, characterization and maintenance of current and new human embryonic stem cell lines.
Tags: Rockefeller University, Northeast, Stem cell research, New York, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Funding, New York City, BRPF, charitable giving
Human beings like stories. We think narratively. If there isn't a beginning, middle, and end, we try and create them from the information we have at hand, because things happen in time and, we like to think, with purpose and significance. Life science research takes as its subject living things, and all living things have a life cycle, at the end of which they die, just like in a story. There is no stasis, and nothing in real life happens in a clean room: living things interact with other living things and physical processes in what we sometimes call ecosystems, which are messy, elegant places of contingency and interdependence.
Tags: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Cornell University, women in science, Illinois, biology research scientists, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Front Line event, Ecology, BRPF, scientific sales
The Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building on the East Campus of the University of Colorado Boulder is already welcoming researchers to their new labs and offices, and on April 26 there will be an official dedication ceremony for the 330,000sf innovative life science facility. While the university is still waiting for state funding to construct a fifth wing for teaching space, the current building is scheduled to be fully occupied by June. As we reported in a widely-read earlier blog on this much-anticipated research complex, one of the key tenants will be the Biofrontiers Institute, formerly the CIMB. Joining them are the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and the Division of Biochemistry.
Tags: Bioresearch, flow cytometry, Biofrontiers Institute, New research facilities, Southwest, University of Colorado Boulder, BioResearch Product Faire Event, biotech industry, Colorado, new construction, Boulder, UCO, BRPF, construction