Expansion of GRA recommended in Georgia Competitiveness Initiative Report
The recently released Georgia Competitiveness Initiative Report includes two recommendations focused on the Georgia Research Alliance: Continue and expand the state’s support for GRA and include funding for two new GRA Eminent Scholars in the state’s FY2013 budget.
Governor Nathan Deal created the Georgia Competitiveness Initiative shortly after he became Governor to “strengthen the state’s economic development strategy” in order to “attract new jobs, encourage investment, and give existing companies the support they deserve.” The Initiative focused on six key factors that drive economic development: business climate, education and workforce development, innovation, infrastructure, global commerce, and government efficiency. Input was gathered through an online survey and stakeholder meetings in each of Georgia’s 12 economic development regions.
Chris Cummiskey, Commissioner of the Department of Economic Development, and Chris Clark, President of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, co-chaired the Initiative. Read the complete report here>
Georgia Research Alliance and Georgia Cancer Coalition merge
The Georgia Research Alliance Board of Trustee has voted to bring the Georgia Cancer Coalition(GCC) under the GRA umbrella through a merger agreement. The merger is part of a larger effort to align Georgia’s economic development assets. Since its launch in 2001, GCC has sparked new discovery through its Distinguished Cancer Clinicians and Scientists; promoted cancer prevention and education through six regional cancer coalitions; coordinated the development of a statewide tissue and tumor bank; and expanded access to clinical trials through it partner organization, Georgia CORE. For more on the history of GCC, follow this link.
Now’s the time: Georgia Income Tax Check Off for Cancer Research
As Georgians file their tax returns, they will be able to support cancer research and prevention simply by writing in a contribution of $1 or more on the Georgia Cancer Research Fund line of their tax return. The contribution goes toward a small grants programs administered through the Georgia Cancer Coalition, an initiative of the Georgia Research Alliance. The amount of the contribution is taken from any refund or added to any amount owed. Since its launch in 2000, the “check off” programs has raised $3 million for cancer research and prevention projects, with some 71 projects funded across the state. For more about the program, click here.
GRA VentureLab company Clearside Biomedical gets $4 million venture capital investment
Atlanta-based startup, Clearside Biomedical, garnered an $4 million venture capital investment that will help advance its technology through the safety and efficacy clinical trials necessary to gain FDA approval. Based on technology developed by researchers at Georgia Tech and Emory University, the company is working on microinjection technology that will use hollow needles to precisely target therapeutics within the eye.
“We expect that targeting drug delivery within the eye will be helpful because we should be able to concentrate drugs at the disease sites where they need to act, and keep them away from other locations,” said Georgia Tech’s Mark Prausnitz, one of the collaborators on the project. “This could reduce side effects and possibly also decrease the dose required.” Prausnitz’s collaborator at Emory is Henry Edelhauser.
Between two and three million eye injections are made each year, many of them to treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD). The researchers believe that the microneedle-based technique could be useful for treating both AMD and glaucoma, as well as other ocular conditions related to diabetes.
In addition to grants through the GRA VentureLab program to advance the company’s microinjection technology, the basic research on which the company was founded received support from the Georgia Research Alliance in securing funding from the National Institutes of Health. Read more here>
GRA Eminent Scholar Voit honored
Dr. Eberhard Voit, GRA Eminent Scholar in Systems Biology at Georgia Tech, has been elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. AIMBE, headquartered in Washington, D.C., is a nonprofit organization with the mission of providing leadership and advocacy in medical and biological engineering. Voit was recognized for his outstanding contributions to the development of computational systems biology and the use of model-based problem-solving in biomedical engineering.
Election to the AIMBE College of Fellows places Voit in the top two percent of medical and biological engineers in the United States. Read more>
GRA VentureLab company helping to develop promising cancer vaccine
GRA VentureLab company Viamune will help to develop and commercialize a promising new cancer vaccine and the technologies used to create it. Based on the work of researchers at the University of Georgia and the Mayo Clinic, the vaccine dramatically reduces tumors in a mouse model that mimics 90 percent of human breast and pancreatic cancer cases, including those resistant to common treatments. According to the researchers, the vaccine elicits a very strong immune response, activating all three components of the immune system to reduce tumor size by an average of 80 percent.
If all goes well, the researchers hope to begin to test the safety of the vaccine in humans in late 2013. Read more>
GRA Eminent Scholar Steve Dalton and colleagues break new ground in stem cell applications
In a paper published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists at the University of Georgia describe a method that — in a single step — directs undifferentiated, or pluripotent, stem cells to become neural crest cells, which are the precursors of bone cells, smooth muscle cells and neurons. Getting stem cells to become the desired cell type has often been quite frustrating.
“Now that we have methods for efficiently making neural crest stem cells, we can start to use them to better understand human diseases,” said lead author Stephen Dalton, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar of Molecular Biology and professor of cellular biology in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. “The cells also can be used in drug discovery and potentially in cell therapy, which involves the transplantation of cells.”
IBM and Georgia Tech launch “One Million Healthy Children” initiative
IBM and Georgia Tech have launched a new research initiative to integrate the massive amounts of data related to children’s health, extending far beyond laboratory test data to include factors like socio-economic status, food resources, education attainment, and access to transportation and health care services. With an initial focus on children suffering from diabetes, with asthma and autism to follow, the goal of the initiative is to improve pediatric care. Other partners in the collaboration are Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Emory University, the Georgia Cancer Coalition, and the Georgia Department of Community Health. Read more here>
VaxyGen and Georgia State University enter collaboration and licensing agreement
VaxyGen Manufacturing Services, a Georgia Research Alliance VentureLab company, has entered an exclusive license and collaboration agreement with the Georgia State University Research Foundation to provide the company with exclusive rights to a novel patent for producing and purifying proteins in development as biopharmaceutical and vaccine products. The collaboration agreement is to commercialize the work of the GSU Biological Process Development and Research Laboratory. In addition to introducing VaxyGen’s president and CEO David Dodd to researchers at GSU, GRA has invested in equipping the Biological Process laboratory. Read more here>
GRA Eminent Scholar Rafi Ahmed featured in Khabar Magazine
Khabar Magazine, a publication for and about the Indian-American community, featured a profile of GRA Eminent Scholar Rafi Ahmed (Emory University) in its October issue. The article follows Ahmed’s path to becoming a global leader in virology and immunology. Read the article>
