Lab suppliers marketing university lab equipment and life science solutions in the northwest United States may be interested in the latest funding news at the University of Oregon, where professor of biology Janis Weeks has received a research grant from Grand Challenges Explorations, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
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Tags: 2014, 2013, UOr, Northwest, University of Oregon, Oregon, BioResearch Product Faire Event, OR, Front Line, Eugene, research grant
Lab suppliers who sell green university lab equipment may be interested in marketing their environmentally-conscious life science solutions at the Biotechnology Calendar, Inc. life science marketing event held at the University of Oregon, which has been ranked one of the greenest universities in the United States.
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Tags: 2014, 2013, UOr, Northwest, University of Oregon, Oregon, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Front Line event, OR, Front Line, Eugene
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.
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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
The National Eye Institute, an NIH agency dedicated to vision research, recently announced the winners of their Challenge to Identify Audacious Goals in Vision Research and Blindness Rehabilitation, or the Audacious Goals Challenge for short. The competition was open to professionals and members of the public and called upon them to think big and bold about vision research goals for the next decades. The prize money was nominal ($3,000) but included an invitation and travel money to attend and present their ideas at the NEI Audacious Goals Development Meeting in Maryland later this month. The real prize, of course, was the opportunity to help set research and funding goals for the next 10-12 years. Of the 500 or so proposals submitted, 10 visionaries were selected as winners.
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Tags: University of Michigan, 2014, CA, Harvard University, Midwest, 2013, Northeast, university of utah, Washington University, Missouri, WashU, UUtah, St. Louis Bioresearch Product Faire Event, Oregon Health and Science University, Northwest, crowdsourcing, Vision Sciences Research, National Eye Institute (NEI), Blindness Rehabilitation, Southwest, University of Alabama, Southern, UT, Ann Arbor, Boston, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Funding, MI, MA, NIH, Harvard, OR, Salt Lake City, Birmingham, AL, UCSB, Santa Barbara, OHSU, Portland, UMich, UC Santa Barbara, Rehabilitation
The Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland has just announced an important partnership with San Diego-based bioprinting technology company Organovo. Research into the biology of cancer, especially how it metastasizes, has been complicated in the past by the limitations of animal models and cell cultures, which really don't tell us enough about the workings of cancer within a human being. Organovo creates living, 3-D human tissue using their bioprinting device, the NovoGen MMX (below). The partnership between OHSU and Organovo will allow cancer research at Knight Institute labs to much more closely model the complex architecture of malignancy within the human body, using in vitro tissue. Ultimately this will lead to the development of more accurate therapeutics and pre-clinical trials.
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Tags: 2014, 2013, Oregon Health Sciences University, Oregon Health and Science University, Northwest, cancer research, Oregon, Cancer Treatment, bioprinting, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Funding, Front Line event, OR, OHSU, Portland, Northwest Region
Researchers trying to find ways to help cure children of disease before they are born with it face an uphill challenge, in part because research on human embryos (even research that might result in a human embryo) is limited by the federal government when federal funding is at issue. Yet progress is being made, notably in the case of mitochondrial diseases passed from mother to child. A gene therapy procedure being studied and tested at Oregon Health Sciences University puts the nucleus of an egg cell with the mother's DNA into the scooped-out mitochondrial shell of another, healthier woman's egg cell. Then the egg is fertilized in vitro and gestated in utero. When research on nonhuman primates three years ago was a success (the monkeys are all alive and well), they tested the basic steps of the procedure with donated human eggs. They brought the hybrid eggs to the blastocyst stage, then cultured lines and did testing on them. At least 20% of the fertilized samples would have been viable for placement in utero.
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Tags: Oregon Health Sciences University, Northwest, gene therapy, Oregon, 2012, scientific research, Cell Research, BioResearch Product Faire Front Line Event, OR, OHSU, Portland
Oregon State University in Corvallis is the state's leading public research institution and has recently announced that the 2011 fiscal year ending in June was its 2nd best ever for overall research funding levels (the prior year being #1 by a hair). In fact, 2011 was OSU's top year for private sector funding, at $35M, which inclulded payments for testing services, environmental analysis, prototype development and licensing fees. That figure represents a 42% increase over 2 years. Alll in all, Oregon State counted $261.7M in external funding in the 2011 fiscal year.
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Tags: Oregon State University, Northwest, Oregon, 2012, Funding, Front Line event, marine science, OR, Corvallis, NSF, ORSTU
An Oregon State University research lab led by Gregory Rorrer has just been awarded a $2M NSF grant as part of the Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) program for Engineering projects. Of the 15 ENG/EFRI awards for 2012, 3 were in the category of Synthetic Biorefineries research: "the large-scale use of micro-organisms that harness solar energy to produce chemicals and fuels from carbon dioxide." Rorrer's lab will study diatom photosynthesis as a means of creating biofuel, as well as two other bioengineered products. Diatoms are a type of algae with a unique biosynthetic ability to extract silicate from the ocean to create cell walls of nanostructured silica. According to the grant proposal, the OSU team will identify cellular processes and cultivation strategies towards the design of scalable systems for a future diatom-based photosynthetic biorefinery.
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Tags: Oregon State University, Northwest, biofuels, women in science, Texas A&M University, Oregon, 2012, University of Wisconsin Madison, Biochemistry, Front Line event, OR, NSF, Corvalis, ORSTU
Oregon State researchers recently discovered DNA in a nematode, a type of roundworm, that may provide an insight into the mechanisms of human aging. The researchers found a specific portion of DNA within the mitochondria of the nematode which displayed the characteristics of "selfish" DNA, in other words, DNA which actually hurts the animal's chances of survival. Scientists have previously found instances of selfish DNA occurring in plants, but this is the first example found in an animal. “We weren’t even looking for this when we found it, and at first we thought it must be a laboratory error,” said Dee Denver, Oregon State associate professor of zoology (photo left courtesy of OSU). "Selfish DNA is not supposed to be found in animals."
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Tags: Oregon State University, Aging, Northwest, cell biology, Oregon, 2012, Cell Research, Genomics, Genetics, current science events, Front Line event, OR, Corvalis, ORSTU, oregon research
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.
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