May 2007 | Back to Table of Contents
Pulse
The Power of Two
By combining their research strengths, Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota are hoping to become national leaders in medical genomics.
On the 13th floor of Mayo Clinic’s Stabile Building, samples of blood and tissue begin a journey that could one day end in a more effective treatment for cancer or tests for early signs of Alzheimer’s disease or aggressive prostate cancer.
As he points out instruments that extract DNA and RNA from tissue, separate cancerous cells from normal ones, or sequence DNA in order to look at the structure of a gene, Eric Wieben, Ph.D., affectionately refers to the floor as a “data generation engine.” It’s the place where the raw material is processed that will help investigators who are funded by the Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics better understand the causes and progression of disease.
The partnership is a 3-year-old endeavor of the University of Minnesota and Mayo Clinic that provides seed money for joint research projects involving scientists from the two institutions. The 13th floor, as well as the two below it, is part of a $21.7 million, 55,000-square-foot addition that opened in late January. Designed to accommodate partnership projects over the next five to 10 years, the space is all but full—one indication of the fact that more and more scientists from the two organizations are teaming up to work on projects they couldn’t have done on their own.
“I get calls probably every week from investigators who are inquiring about the next round of partnership funding,” says Wieben, who directs the partnership for Mayo. “We’re seeing more top-flight investigators from both institutions beginning to get into the idea that the partnership really can be a fabulous way of helping research teams develop new areas that they don’t currently have long-established projects in. And that’s what we were hoping it would do.”
The partnership and what it has produced so far (the list includes five grant applications funded, three patents filed, 44 peer-reviewed papers, and 42 scientific presentations) isn’t just attracting the attention of scientists from within the university and Mayo Clinic. Wieben and Mark Paller, M.D., who heads up the project for the University of Minnesota, have spoken to groups from other U.S. academic health centers and even from Iceland about how working together is leading to new discoveries.
Early Returns
When leaders of the two institutions came together in 2003 at the urging of Gov. Tim Pawlenty to plan the partnership, one of the goals was to make Minnesota a national player in biotechnology. That year, the state provided $2 million and each of the institutions put up another $1 million in seed money to fund four teams studying prostate cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, obesity, and cardiovascular disease.
Since then, the partnership has received two more rounds of funding from the Legislature totaling $30 million. The first $15 million funded nine additional teams working on pancreatic cancer, tuberculosis, brain tumors, and cardiovascular, neuromuscular, and autoimmune diseases as well as transplant rejection, drug addiction, and development of cancer drugs. In March, four more received funding: one looking for targets for treating atopic dermatitis, the others for predicting Alzheimer’s disease, identifying a hallmark of early Alzheimer’s, and testing whether specific therapies prevent Alzheimer’s in mice. Another three teams were funded in April by a Medica Foundation grant.
Partnership dollars are also being used to recruit four new faculty members to the two institutions and to purchase new technology including a DNA sequencer and computerized platforms that interpret genomic and proteomic data in order to find what Wieben calls “the gems of information.”
Wieben and Paller have been back at the Legislature this year in an effort to get permanent, ongoing funding for partnership activities. “Every time we don’t know there’s future funding, we can’t move ahead,” says Paller, who is optimistic about proposals by the governor, the House, and the Senate. “In terms of ROI, we’re getting back what we’ve put into it, and it’s still early.”
For example, one of the first teams to receive funding developed molecules that can bind to Alzheimer’s plaques in the brain—an early indicator of the disease—and be seen by magnetic resonance imaging. That work led to the University of Minnesota’s Center for Magnetic Resonance Research receiving an $8 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) Blueprint Grant for Neuroscience Research. Another team found new molecular markers for the genes associated with aggressive prostate cancer. Wieben says several companies have expressed interest in bringing to market urine and blood tests for genetic markers of aggressive forms of the disease once the investigators’ results are further validated.
Upping the Ante
Working in partnership also gives the two institutions a competitive edge in the eyes of the scientific community. “If you look at each institution, neither of us is in the top 10 in terms of NIH funding,” Paller says. “But if you combine what we get from the NIH, together we’re number six or seven. And that means that for a given problem such as Alzheimer’s, we have the horsepower to compete against anyone else in the top 10 when we pool our resources.”
And given the quantity and quality of proposals for joint projects Wieben and Paller are seeing cross their desks, the two institutions will likely become even bigger players in bioscience, biotechnology, and medical genomics. “There’s been no shortage of good ideas and applications,” says Paller, who notes the application process for partnership funds has become “almost as competitive” as that for NIH grants. “We fund fewer than 25 percent of applicants. The good news is that only the best ideas are getting funded. The bad news is that you could easily go half way down the list or farther and still be able to fund really great research.”—Kim Kiser