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Hey everyone, I'm leaving for the ASBMB / Experimental Biology 2007 conference tomorrow in lovely Washington D.C. Won't be back until late next week, so look for posts to resume the week after. If you're headed to the conference, stop by the poster (#645.1) and say hi!
cheers,
Brian
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In the April 13th edition of the St. Louis Business Journal, Saint Louis University was named the best place to work in St. Louis, beating out Panera Bread Company and A. G. Edwards & Sons, Inc. The report cited the schools commitment to public service as well as its generous employee benefits program as contributing to the high marks. SLU was cited by St. Louis Magazine as one of its "Great Places to Work" in St. Louis in March.
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German spinal implant and surgical device manufacturer Ulrich Medical has announced that their U.S. subsidiary will be based in Chesterfield. The company currently produces a variety of tools for spinal surgery, including the obelisc, a vertebral replacement used in spinal reconstruction. Merle Symes and Helmut Schoenhoeffer were named CEO and Vice President of Business Development, respectively. The subsidiary also announced it is in the process of hiring additional staff.
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This may be old news for a lot of people, but it took me until this week to discover / fall in love with Gina Trapani's Better Gmail extension for Firefox. The add-ons showed up on Lifehacker on Monday and oh, what a glorious set of toys it is. Keyboard shortcuts, custom message labels and colors, saved searches ... just enough to make gmail the wunderkind it was always meant to be.
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Well, it's not Friday, but with all of the state politics last week I didn't get to post an events listing. Here's what's going on this week:
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According to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, the St. Louis Metro Area gained nearly 500 new scientific research and development jobs during a12-month reporting period ending in February. This 7 percent increase brings the total number of R&D positions up to 7,600. The numbers were presented over the weekend by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as a bright spot ain contrast to the region's stagnant manufacturing sector.
Where does that put us in comparison to other U.S. cities?
In terms of total and per capita R&D jobs, St. Louis is still underperforming:
But our overall R&D employment is growing nicely:
In the past four years, St. Louis has seen a total growth in R&D employment of over 33%. That's remarkable, especially considering how fast the major biotech markets have expanded during that same time frame:
Some fun numbers. It seems as if St. Louis has a ways to go, but we're definetely on the right track.
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As described here yesterday, the Missouri Senate Appropriations Committee this week began considering a bill of enormous importance to the regional life sciences. Missouri House Bill 7 would appropriate funding from the state tobacco settlement into a special Life Sciences Research Trust Fund, created in 2003 to support bioscience projects throughout the state.
Although the program was scheduled to begin last year, a handful of legislators, backed by special interest groups, blocked any use of the funds for fear they would be spent on stem cell research. This year, despite the passage of Amendment 2 in the fall, and the fact that NONE of the funds would be used for stem cell research, passage of the bill seems uncertain. As a result, Missouri may lose out on several important federal projects dealing with national defense and bioenergy.
Early this week, the Missouri Biotechnology Association (MOBIO) issued an action alert for all friends of the Missouri life science community to contact members of the Senate Appropriations Committee and voice their support for HB7. Of the ten current members of the committee, eight voted to create the Life Sciences Trust Fund four years ago. The other two were not present for the vote. Help us hold them to their promise!
Here's how you can help: Contact your state senator! If he or she is on the Appropriations Committee, great. Otherwise, call or write your representative and pick a member of the committee to get in touch with also. If you need help with what to say, here's a quick template:
Dear Members of the Missouri Senate Appropriations Committee:On March 29th, the Missouri House of Representatives passed HB7, an appropriations bill for the Department of Economic Development. This measure includes a $13.5 million allocation from the state tobacco settlement into a Life Sciences Research Trust Fund. In 2003, many current members of the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to create the Trust Fund as a way to enhance the scientific and economic strengths of our state. As a friend of Missouri’s scientific community, I ask the committee members to honor the commitment they made four years ago and quickly refer a fully funded version of this bill onto the full Senate.
As described by Rachel Melcer in her April 10th article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the 2007 Life Sciences Research Trust Fund allocation is especially important. This year, much of the Fund is committed to Missouri’s proposals for two major federal projects:
- The U.S. Department of Agriculture / Department of Homeland Security National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility will guard our nation against future disease and bioterrorism risks. Housed at the University of Missouri-Columbia, the facility could provide over 1,500 new jobs and $20 billion in new economic development to central Missouri.
- The U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Research Center will draw on Missouri’s agricultural strengths to develop a new generation of energy sources. A central part of President Bush’s energy plan, the Bioenergy Research Center will anchor the growing St. Louis biotechnology sector.
Missouri is among several states intensely competing for each of these facilities. Although our technical proposals are superb, Missouri cannot hope to win either project without public support from the Life Sciences Research Trust Fund.
In recent months, some political groups have tried to tarnish the image of our researchers by falsely portraying them as immoral or uncaring. The truth is that Missouri’s scientists and engineers have dedicated themselves to improving the lives of those around them, often for limited financial gain or public recognition. Their work has helped cure and comfort the sick, feed the hungry and power our homes and businesses. By fully funding the Life Sciences Research Trust Fund, the Missouri legislature will ensure that these contributions continue into the future.
Once again, I urge the members of the Senate Appropriations Committee to honor their past promises and fully fund the Life Sciences Research Trust Fund found in HB7.
Respectfully yours,
[Name]
[Address]
Please tell your family and friends to support this measure. In November, our state signaled its support for the life sciences by approving Amendment 2, and now we can do it again.
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Last month, the statewide press reported on efforts by the MO state legislature to strip funding for new life science construction projects from the MOHELA spending bill spearheaded by Gov. Blunt. Democratic senators were eventually able to block the weakened measure, but it looks like opponents of life science are at it again.
In 2003, the legislature approved a special program where up to 25% of the funding received from the state's tobacco settlement would be diverted into a special Life Science Trust Fund and distributed to worthy research projects. This process could have begun last year. However, radical special interests, fearing that the money could go towards stem cell research, killed the funding.
Despite the successful passage of Amendment 2 in November, it seems that this opposition is gearing up for a repeat. The Trust Fund was slated to receive $33.3 million dollars this year, all of which would go towards various life science projects. Last week, the MO House pulled $20 million off of that amount for Medicaid-related prescription drug benefits, leaving only $13.5 million for life science. It now seems even that amount is in jeopardy. Quoted in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Rep. Jim Lembke (R-Mehlville), a leading opponent of the funding, expected the Senate to leave "next to no money, if not no money" for the Trust Fund.
This resistance comes at a very awkward time for the Missouri biotechnology sector. The original $33.3 million package included mostly agricultural and bioenergy projects, including state subsidies for two major proposals:
MO is up against competing state proposals with generous public support for both of these projects, making passage of the complete Trust Fund extremely important. Despite this importance, and the fact that none of the funding is slated for controversial research, life science opponents may still get their way.
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The St. Louis affiliate of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation recently awarded $2 million in grants to 24 local organizations for their work improving cancer patient care. The group also provided several research grants, including one to the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. That team, led by William Gillanders, MD, has developed a quantitative RNA assay to detect signs of breast cancer in peripheral blood. The Komen funding will allow them to acquire a high-throughput tumor cell detection platform from to validate their technology.
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Tripos, Inc. announced that they will complete the $4.15 million sale of their HQ building on Hanley Road to a Missouri LLC sometime today. Tripos, in the process of a corporate liquidation after the loss of key molecular modeling clients last year, will lease space in the facility from the new owners for up to 10 months.
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According to Reuters, the U.S. Senate is set to debate a stem cell research bill seen by many to be a compromise meaure between full federal funding of the work and the current ban. Sponsored by Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Georgia) and Norm Coleman (R-Minnesota), the new bill would allow funding for research done on human embryos that have naturally lost the ability to develop into fetuses but still retain some potential for cell culture. A second bill, virtually identical to that passed by the Congress last year and vetoed by President Bush, will also be debated.
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Congratulations to Dr. Leonid Livshitz, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Wash U, for winning 1st prize at the March 2007 Gordon Research Conference on Cardiac Arrhythmia Mechanisms. His poster, entitled "Calcium and electrical Alternans in Cardiac Myocytes: role of CaMKII and Repolarizing Currents", came out of work performed in Dr. Yoram Rudy's laboratory.
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Kind of cool if you're into how the venture cap business works, Venture Hacks is a new blog dedicated to providing VC cheat codes for your everyday entrepreneur. The authors, Naval Ravikant and Nivi, are both veterans of the startup world, and they shovel out the advice in copious bucketfuls. Their first series of posts: Term sheet hacks.
Any comments about their advice?
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In work appearing in the June edition of the FASEB journal, researchers at Wash U have sucessfully used novel nanoparticle beacons to track individual living cells under MRI. Developed in the laboratories of Samuel A. Wickline, M.D., and Gregory Lanza, M.D., Ph.D., these nanoparticles could eventually help monitor the progress of stem cell treatments. The technology works by "feeding" cells a solution of polymer beads laced with perfluorocarbon, a non-toxic chemical easily seen on an MRI scan. The nanoparticles don't seem to affect the cell's chemistry or behavior, so the team has high hopes for an eventual clinical application.
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KV Pharmaceutical Co. announced on Friday that it will pay $150 million to a California company for the rights to sell its estrogen-replacement therapeutic, EvaMista, in the U.S. The drug was originally developed by Mountain View-based Vivus, Inc. to help relieve menopausal symptoms. KV will offer the therapeutic through its Ther-Rx subsidiary alongside several other women's health products.
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The University of Missouri, St. Louis announced last month that it would be renaming its seven-year-old Center for Molecular Electronics to better fit the future work planned for the center. The new Center for NanoScience (CNS) will build on previous work with atomic-scale electronics with the eventual addition of chemistry, biology and material science teams. The $10 million William L. Clay Center for Molecular Electronics building was completed in the summer of 1997. The university is planning an open house once renovations are complete.
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Stereotaxis announced Tuesday that its new magnetically enabled ablation catheter has received FDA approval. Catheter ablation is a treatment for cardiac arrhythmias that re-wires the heart's circuitry by applying small electrical currents to the internal cardiac muscle. The new 8mm catheters, twice the size of existing Stereotaxis models, allow use of the stronger impulses required for some more serious heart conditions. The devices had been tested extensively in Italy and Germany prior to gaining U.S. approval.
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In 2003, Minteer partnered with a graduate student, Nick Akers, to found Akermin, Inc (She's the "min"). Thus far, that company has focused its efforts on ethanol-based fuel cell. However, there is considerable overlap between that technology and the one described this week in Chicago. Glucose has an even greater potential for power generation than alcohol, with the added advantage of extreme biocompatibility. For example, it has long been a dream of electrochemists to develop a surgically-implantable power source that could operate off of the digested sugar in a patient's bloodstream. Such a device could fuel a medical implant without requiring complicated battery replacements. One can only assume that this technology will also become incorporated into Akermin's portfolio.
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The opinions expressed herein are soley those of the author and do not represent the views of any other individual or group, unless expressely stated.
Copyright © 2006-2007, Brian Loyal. All rights reserved