September 2007

Dr. Kenneth Polonsky

The local effort, led by Dr. Kenneth Polonsky at Wash U, will create the Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS) to speed up the planning of clinical trials and research collaborations. Member institutions include Washington University, BJC HealthCare; Saint Louis University School of Public Health, Doisy College of Health Sciences and Center for HealthCare Ethics; the University of Missouri-St. Louis College of Nursing; Southern Illinois University Edwardsville School of Nursing; St. Louis College of Pharmacy and others. The ICTS will complement Wash U's existing efforts at translational medicine as part of its BioMed 21 Initiative.

(...more from mednews.wustl.edu)

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I'll admit straightaway that I'm a sucker for good presenters. It's kind of a sad infatuation, actually, since they're such a rare breed these days. Much has been written about different techniques for giving explosive, emotion-filled presentations (My favorite is still Guy Kawasaki's 10/20/30 Rule), but as far as I can tell, most people either:

a) Don't think they need the help

b) Don't care about "business work" like presenting enough to even try and improve.

The other night I read about a cool new trend trying to change all of that. It's called Pecha Kucha (pronounced 'peh-chak-cha' or 'pet-shah coot-shah' ), which means "chit-chat" in Japanese. Invented by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham, a pair of Tokyo-based architects, Pecha Kucha is a amalgam of beat poetry and public performance art, transmitted through a set of PowerPoint slides.

During Pecha Kucha Nights, often at fashionable clubs, presenters prepare 20 slides on whatever topic interests them: art, architecture, science, etc. Each slide is displayed for exactly 20 seconds then automatically advanced, for a total presentation length of 6 minutes, 40 seconds. The result is a kind of parallel conversation between the presenter and the slides. If you've ever seen Stephen Colbert do his "The Word" bit, it's kind of like that.

Apparently these things are held in over 80 cities across the world, but not in our Lou. Anyone interested in opening a franchise?

Also, I've never tried this format for a scientific talk, but it seems like it could work. What secret techniques do people have for giving their presentations? Do you think you could keep up with the 20-second tempo?

(...more from pecha-kucha.org)

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The Wall Street Journal gave a shout-out to St. Louis' own Kereos last Wednesday in a feature article about venture capital investments in nanotechnology. Housed at the Center for Emerging Technologies in Midtown, Kereos is working on nanoparticle delivery agents for gadolinium, a contrast agent useful for imaging cancer cells. Currently, the company is backed with over $20 million from a variety of national funds, and it expects to begin clinical testing of its imaging technology early next year.

(...more from wsj.com)

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The Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures (MCLC), a leading advocate for ethical stem cell research and treatment and organizer of last year's Amendment 2 effort, recently received the 2007 Grassroots Advocacy Award by the Genetics Policy Institute (GPI). The GPI is an international coalition of pro-research and patient groups dedicated to promoting the benefits of advanced medical research. Announcing the award, the GPI cited not only the MCLC's recent ballot victory, but also the group's legislative efforts and opposition of human cloning. The award will be presented at the GPI's Stem Cell Summit in Boston this October.

(...more from prnewswire.com)

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Dr. Robert Beachy

(...more from enterprise.com)

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The University of Missouri - St. Louis reported in their September research administration newsletter that the recently-christened Center for Nanoscience is quickly getting its new facilities in order. Housed in the William L. Clay building on the school's Normandy campus, the center has begun the process of organizing itself into four focus areas:

• Nanocharacterization & Molecular Imaging: Developing and implementing advanced characterization techniques to understand the structure-function relationships of nanoscale materials/devices and biological systems.


• Theoretical & Computational Nanoscience: Theoretical understanding of nanoscale phenomena and nanoscale systems with extensive use of high-performance computing.


• Nanoscale Materials & Systems: Synthesizing nanoscale materials or systems and testing their physical, chemical or biological properties for broad applications in energy, biology and biotechnology.


• Membrane & Cellular Function: Understanding the fundamental mechanisms of biological systems with a focus on enzyme, membrane and cellular function.

Once all of the administrative changes are in place, it looks like the first order of business will be establishing a system for submitting lucrative federal grant applications. I think that UMSL often gets overlooked in discussions of the area's resources, so I'm eagerly awaiting some big news from the new center.

(...more from umsl.edu)

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Plant genomics-startup Divergence announced today that it had won a $100,000 SBIR grant from the NSF to study using RNAi technologies to develop parasite-resistant crops. The new prize adds to a series of SBIR grants awarded to the company by the NSF and USDA recently, adding up to over $1.1 million total. Since its founding in 1998, Divergence has studied way to protect crops from parasitic nematodes, a common agricultural pest.

(...more from genomeweb.com)

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St. Louis-based Novus International, a leading worldwide supplier of animal health and nutrition products, announced last week that they have formed a new company to focus on equine health. The new subsidiary, called Arenus, will focus on the equine, canine and human health markets, and will begin to market its products in the continental US beginning this year. As a member of the Novus R&D network, the new company benefits from the nearly 50 Ph.D. and Masters level animal nutritionists, over 25 veterinarians, and a multitude of other affiliated scientists associated with the parent company.

(...more from agrimarketing.com)

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Client companies served by St. Louis' Center for Emerging Technologies business incubator have attracted $48.1 million in funding this year and $587.5 in the past decade. The news comes at a great time for the center, which recently announced a third expansion of its midtown campus.

Civic groups often point to incubators as signs of a region's high-tech health because their client companies hire a lot of people for relatively long periods of time and at above average salaries. The CET has directly created 350 jobs over its lifetime, and currently houses 105 individuals working in a dozen companies.

Some other fun facts:

• Annual payroll of CET employees, as of June 30th: $14 million


• Since opening in 1998, the CET has hosted 25 companies, 20 of which are still in business


• St. Louis is rare in having not one, but two technology incubators in the region, the other being the Nidus Center in Creve Coeur. Both locations are currently at capacity and actively working to expand their operations

(...more from bizjournals.com)

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Tonight at 4:00 PM, researchers at the Missouri Botanical Garden are scheduled to host a public discussion on a new international project called the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL). The EOL project is aimed at cataloging and describing the Earth's species - ALL of them, an achievement that has so far frustrated scientists. Lasting for 10 years, the EOL project will eventually generate around 300 million pages of data contributed by both professional researchers and members of the amateur community, like birdwatchers. Eventually, the project's supporters hope to produce a resource that can be used by both elementary school students and PhDs.

(...more from mobot.org)

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Both the undergraduate and graduate entrepreneurship programs at Saint Louis University's John Cook School of Business have appeared in several national rankings in recent weeks. Late last month, Fortune Small Business magazine included the undergrad program in its Top-25 listing. This came after a #21 ranking in US News and World Report the same week, and a #27 ranking for the graduate program in US News earlier this year.

Considering there are nearly 2,200 colleges nationwide teaching entrepreneurship, that puts the SLU programs in the top 1% of their class. Not bad.

(...more from slu.edu)

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On Monday, plant science startup Chlorogen, Inc. announced that it would be shutting down all operations in the coming months. The company, a Nidus Center client since moving to St. Louis in 2003, was focused on the production of pharmaceutical proteins in engineered tobacco plants. Their technology was supposedly able to minimize the risk of cross-pollination with other nearby crops, a major fear for non-biotech farmers.

Rumors have it that the company was nearly acquired by an unnamed large corporation, but the deal just recently fell through. Instead, Chlorogen President and CEO David Duncan, the only remaining employee, announced that he has begun to sell off the company's IP to interested parties, such as Indianapolis-based Dow AgroSciences LLC.

Chlorogen received over $12 million in venture financing over the years, including funds from Clayton-based Prolog Ventures. Along with the sell-off of Tripos earlier this year, this marks the second biotech closure in the past 12 months - nothing to be too worried about, but still interesting. Some good news: anyone interested in an open spot at Nidus?

(...more from stltoday.com)

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Last month, the St. Louis law firm of Armstrong Teasdale announced that they had expanded their intellectual property practice by thirteen new individuals, including four new partners and three associates. The seven new lawyers were formerly of Senniger Powers, another St. Louis intellectual property firm. Armstrong Teasdale's new members provides a boost to the firms already-strong life science IP credentials, especially with the inclusion of partners Christopher M. Goff, Richard L. Bridge, Derick E. Allen, and Michael G. Munsell. Each of those four has focused in the past on some aspect of biotechnology and bioengineering.

(...more from armstrongteasdale.com)

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Monsanto announced today that it had completed the acquisition of Agroeste Sementes, a leading Brazillian corn seed company. Brazil is currently the 3rd largest corn-producer in the world, and Agroeste's seeds are planted on about 10 percent of that country's corn acreage.

This is another one of several big steps that Monsanto has taken recently to move into the Brazilian market. Last month, a Brazilian regulatory body gave preliminary approval for the company to eventually begin selling its YieldGard® Corn Borer seed in that country. In addition to the increased sales from these activities, Monsanto also stands to benefit from gaining access to several lines of corn seed from South America, which may be useful for their trait engineering research.

Today's acquisition was paid for with $100 million in cash.

(...more from monsanto.com)

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Monsanto announced today that they've completed construction on a new, $21 Million data center on the western edge of their Creve Coeur headquarters. The new center will house the corporation's computing power, used for everything from customer order processing to research bioinformatics. In addition, Monsanto hopes to receive LEED certification for the facility by next year, making it only the 3rd data center in the nation to receive that designation. Construction on the new center began in 2006.

(...more from monsanto.com)

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WIRED.com reported last Thursday that an internet security firm, Support Intelligence, has recently detected a large amount of botnet spam coming from infected computers within Pfizer. A botnet is a network of computers infected with computer viruses that can be remotely controlled from afar to send out spam and conduct other mayhem. Oddly enough, it seems that some of the infected Pfizer computers have been used to send out spam touting one of the company's own products: Viagra.

Pfizer has had a surge of computer problems in the past year. This summer alone, the company admitted it had suffered from three seperate security breaches affecting over 50,000 employees. No word on whether the St. Louis location has been affected by the incidents.

I guess this adds new meaning to the term "viral marketing" (*rimshot)

(...more from wired.com)

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On Wednesday, a group of Missouri legislators gathered at Wash U's Knight Center for the MOBIO Benchmarking 2007 Tour Convening Forum. The event pulled together a roomful of local industry and academic leaders in life science, plus some guests from out of state, to educate the lawmakers what some of the benefits of a healthy biotech sector could be.

Oh yeah, I got to go too (Thanks Kelly). An aside - I was at Wash U for 4 years, and after all the whispers about gold-plated bathroom faucets and diamond studded gift bags, I have to say I was a little let down by the lack of absurd luxury. Where's all that tuition going - education? At least the food was good. :-)

Some background: The 2000 Battelle report, and its update in 2005, both identified public policy as a major challenge for the state life science sector. This was punctuated this year with a series of legislative actions seen as in opposition to biotech (See my Money & Politics category for too many links to list).

In response, MOBIO put together the BIO Benchmarking tour - a whirlwind trek through the state's life science sector, beginning in KC on Sept. 17th and heading East the rest of that week. Wednesday's event was something of a kickoff, with speakers and networking events:

• Mark Wrighton, Chancellor of Wash U, started off with an overview of the region's life science strengths. Fun fact: MO is 12th-highest recipient of NIH funds (we're 17ish in terms of population)
• Kelly Gillespie, Executive Director of the Missouri Biotechnology Association, came next with a description of the rest of the fall tour. Despite (or because of) the recent controversy over embryonic stem cell research, Gillespie made it clear that life science is about more than that. In fact, he said he'd ban mention of ESC research during the events if he could!
• One of the guest speakers was the Honorable Nick Jordan, State Senator from Kansas, who went into some of the development his state has been funding. I'll admit, as someone who assumed that Kansas was made mostly of Corn and Luddites, I was pretty impressed with the work they've accomplished. A few years back, the state created the Bioscience Initiative, an independent board allowed to fund venture investment, education improvements and life science construction. The initiative was originally funded with $500 - $600 million over 10 years through income taxes on life science workers, and it looks like more is coming down the pike.
• Next was Stephen Mulloney, Director of Policy and Public Affairs for the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council. I have to say, I was kind of underwhelmed. I don't know if I was expecting some magic code as to how to build a biotech sector, but mostly I got the impression that the state has been lucky. Mass. has only recently gotten into the state-funded economic development game, including large life science subsidies and reform of the tax and real estate code. But, all of this has come after the more or less organic growth of the sector. I suppose it was nice to show the legislators a success story, though.
• After a lunch talk by Dr. William Peck, Dr. Mary Sansalone, Engineering Dean at WashU presented a survey of the bioengineering and renewable energy projects underway at the school. Dr. Sansalone caught a lot of flak last year from some people at the school some administrative changed she implemented upon starting the job, but I thought she was pretty impressive. New a lot about the technologies, their applications - plus she was great at handling questions.
• Lastly, Dr. Thomas Templeman, General Manager of Centocor Biologics, and Richard Fleming ran through some of the advantages / disadvantages of Midwestern location

So overall, pretty well done. One thing that impressed me was the political diversity of the legislative group. I was half expecting the session to basically preach to a choir of life science supporters, but Kelly Gillespie did a nice job rounding up a mix of urban / rural, liberal / conservative districts. The idea is that they'll end up with a new respect for biotech and then tell their friends. So, hopefully more sessions like these can start to move the state legislative process back our way.

(...more from stltoday.com)

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It looks like Kelly Gillespie and the folks at MOBIO are putting together a new website for something called the Missouri Life Sciences Project at http://www.missourilifesciences.org. It's not all the way there yet (No Sigma-Aldrich or CORTEX on the map?), and the frentic start-up video is a little annoying, but overall pretty cool. Worth a look.

(...more from missourilifesciences.org)

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