The Clinical & Translational Science Center (CTSC) headquartered at Manhattan's Weill Cornell Medical College has just received a $49.6M renewal of its 5-year grant by the NIH's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) in order to continue its work. Launched seven years ago, the the CTSC set out to realize the successful integration of inter-institutional resources among neighbors on York Avenue and the immediate area. The resulting cluster of New York's East Side institutions forms a unique and cohesive biomedical complex collectively dedicated to accelerating the clinical application of basic science discoveries.
0 Comments Click here to read/write comments
Tags: Rockefeller University, Northeast, Translational Research, New research facilities, new science wet labs, New York, Columbia University, 2012, Weill Cornell, Columbia, MSSM, RockU, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Funding, NY, NIH, Stoneybrook, SunySB, NYC campus competition, Mt Sinai School of Medicine
Given that the ubiquity of sweat glands over the surface of the body is such a defining aspect of human physiology (and evolution), it's a wonder how little basic research has been done to understand how they work at the cellular level. Until Rockefeller University cell biologists published their recent findings in Cell, we didn't even know if sweat glands had unique stem cells. It turns out they do. The study also demonstrated that, while sweat glands are close cousins to mammary glands, adult stem cell activity is markedly different in the two systems (though they have a common progenitor), and in fact that there are four separate stem cell types that regulate maintenance and repair of glands and their epidermal-level counterparts throughout our lives.
0 Comments Click here to read/write comments
Tags: Rockefeller University, Northeast, Stem cell research, cell biology, New York, 2012, Cell Research, bio research, BioResearch Product Faire Event, NY, New York City
By now you've probably heard about 3D bio printing, a bioengineering technique for literally building functional replacement tissue and eventually organs. (Read an earlier blog of ours on the subject.) While still in the early stages of development in terms of actually producing a human organ for transplant, the technology is advancing and critical problems are being met with innovative solutions. In the July issue of Nature Materials, University of Pennsylvania scientists, in conjunction with MIT and Harvard researchers, published an article documenting their success creating a blood vessel network using sugar.
0 Comments Click here to read/write comments
Tags: Pennsylvania, Northeast, University of Pennsylvania, UPenn, 2012, Cell Research, bioprinting, bio research, Philadelphia, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Research, Front Line event, PA, BRPF, scientist solutions, science solution
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.
0 Comments Click here to read/write comments
Tags: Northeast, Oregon Health Sciences University, Oregon, 2012, Cardiac Arrest, Front Line event, NIH, OR, OHSU, Portland, BRPF
Construction began four years ago on Mt. Sinai New York's new 550,000sf Hess Center for Science and Medicine on E. 102nd St., between Madison and Fifth Avenues in East Harlem. Originally due for completion this fall, the new opening date has been pushed into spring of 2013. The 13-storey building is a major advance in the medical institute's larger plan of integrating its clinical and research areas through a strong translational medicine program. Basic research facilities will include wet and dry bench labs, animal facilities, and computer-supported research spaces. There will be lounges, meeting and education rooms, and other open, interactive spaces to encourage collaboration through daily contact. The half million square feet will add to, not replace, Mount Sinai School of Medicine's overall facility space. They have already begun recruiting and hiring new faculty researchers.
0 Comments Click here to read/write comments
Tags: Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Northeast, Translational Research, New research facilities, 2012, MSSM, BioResearch Product Faire Event, NY, New York City, new construction
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.
4 Comments Click here to read/write comments
Tags: Harvard University, Northeast, AIDS Research, animal research, 2012, Immune System, Boston, BioResearch Product Faire Event, MA, Harvard, BRPF, scientist solutions
University expansion is never uncomplicated, especially in an urban environment where density is high, real estate is ultra-expensive, and development is intensely regulated. Yet new buildings do go up in places like New York City if you have the drive, wealth, and reputation of an institution like Columbia University, which is currently constructing not only new buildings but an entirely new campus to expand its academic and research programs. In addition to the original Morningside Heights location and the Medical School campus in Washington Heights, Columbia has purchased and is building a new campus in the "Manhattanville" neighborhood, stretching from 125th Street to 133rd Street in West Harlem.
0 Comments Click here to read/write comments
Tags: biomedical sciences, Northeast, Biomedical expansion, New research facilities, New York, Columbia University, 2012, Neuroscience, Columbia, BioResearch Product Faire Event, NY, new construction, NYC campus competition
How is it that a prominent Rockefeller University professor and director of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior is sought out by a fashion magazine one month, the New York Magazine the next, and a CBS interview just last week? Dr. Leslie Vosshall studies the mechanism of scent recognition in humans on the one hand, and attraction to humans by mosquitos on the other. We still know so little about smell, and even less about why an insect like the mosquito hones in on one of us more often than another, but the Vosshall Lab is adding insight to the genetic basis of olfactory recognition. Given that mosquitos are a global vector for disease, including right here in the U.S., Vosshall's research aims to find out what it is about a particular one of us that excites the little bug to such raptures. If we know that, perhaps we can intervene productively to keep them at bay. As for the fashion magazine (Elle Canada), they wanted an expert on scent to comment on designers' and retailers' new fad for marketing their products with a scent component.
4 Comments Click here to read/write comments
Tags: Rockefeller University, Northeast, women in science, New York, 2012, genetic engineering, Neuroscience, BioResearch Product Faire Event, NY, New York City
The first construction of an image by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMRI) by Dr. Paul Lauterbur took place at the University at Stony Brook thirty years ago, and the Stony Brook Chemistry professor went on to win the 2003 Nobel Prize for his work. So it's fitting that another breakthrough in MRI technology is also taking place at the Long Island research university, this time by biomedical engineer Balaji Sitharaman, right, and his team, who have developed a potentially safer and more cost effective MRI contrast agent for improved disease diagnosis and detection. The agent is graphene-based rather than gadolinium-based, and the success of the advanced agent is documented in a recent PLoS ONE article.
2 Comments Click here to read/write comments
Tags: biomedical sciences, biomedical research, Northeast, New York, Stony Brook University, venture development in life sciences, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Biomedical Research Funding, scientist solutions, life science products, science solution
While magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners are most often associated with clinical diagnostics activities, their ability to visualize internal structures of the body in detail, especially soft tissues, makes MRI scanning machines extremely valuable for laboratory research scientists as well. So it's no small matter that an NIH equipment grant has made it possible for Cornell University in Ithaca to get one of its own, just last week, and establish the Cornell MRI Facility in Martha Van Rensselaer Hall. It's not just any scanner either, but a 3 Tesla GE Discovery 750, which provides noninvasive imaging with high signal-to-noise ratio and spatial resolution for structural and functional research involving small animals, humans, plants and biomedical materials. MRI technology does not involve radiation.
0 Comments Click here to read/write comments
Tags: Northeast, Cornell University, New research facilities, New York, NIH, Research equipment, Laboratory Imaging Equipment