Lonza acquires Amaxa

This story from GenomeWeb Daily News was a bit of a shocker:

Lonza Acquires Transfection Systems Maker Amaxa

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Swiss firm Lonza said today that it has acquired cell research products firm amaxa for an undisclosed sum.

Lonza expects the acquisition to strengthen the cell discovery business of its Lonza Bioscience division, which supplies primary cells and serves a similar customer base to that of amaxa. Cologne, Germany-based amaxa’s Nucleofection technology is used to transfer DNA or RNA into cells that are considered difficult to transfect.

Lonza said that the acquisition will enhance the profit margins and growth rates for Lonza Bioscience. The deal is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to be completed early in the third quarter of this year.

I have been doing some work with both of these companies over the past couple months and didn’t see this coming. Seems like a good move for Lonza, although I am not sure what this means for the good people at Amaxa. We were working with my stem cells as a model for their nucleofection system

Walter Reed Pilot Bioproduction Facility

I thought I would go south for a minute and write a quick post on a Saturday morning about the Walter Reed Pilot Bioproduction facility. With so much bad press hindering progress down at the Silver Spring facility, and the subsequent re-deployment of the former commander to Ft Detrick, I guess that is enough of a link to Frederick County Biotech that this topic is postworthy.

I was inspired by an e-mail from an old colleague, Rick M. He persisted after I ragged him about being in MoCo

Jim-

Just touching base with you. I have some folks that are Frederickites who were wondering when the next get together is. Also wanted to pass along our new website for the Walter Reed Institute of Research Pilot Bioproduction Facility (WRAIR PBF). As you know, we are a facility that manufactures Phase I/Phase II vaccine candidates under cGMP conditions, and we work with BSL2 level microorganisms and viruses. We also have validated sterile vial filling and lyophilization capabilities. This website contains information about our abilities and capabilities as well as WRAIR’s capabilities on a more general basis for clinical trials, research collaborations, etc. I thought you might like to have it in case anyone up there that you know might need these services (we aren’t that well known.

The PBF web pages are available at

http://wrair-www.army.mil/Pilot_Bioproduction_Facility/Welcome/

here is a link to the PBF home page in the “Divisions” drop down menu.

Thanks,

Rick M

It looks like a good place to grow your vaccines for the clinic,  if you have any to propagate.  I just wonder why you would need to go down the road when we have  the NIAID Vaccine Pilot Plant off Geoffrey Way, right around the corner from us at FITCI?

Getting Ready For SciFoo ‘08

On Wednesday I got an e-mail from the Scifoo guys giving me all the directions for preparing for Scifoo in August: where to book hotel room, travel plans, the Bus route to and fro the Hotel, updating the Scifoo wiki, etc. I am trying to think of something worthy to bring to the table for discussion, as they’re trying to get people’s ideas for what they’d like to talk about.

I was almost intimidated by looking at the list from last year, via jurvetson’s photostream:

I’d like to discuss an idea I’m formulating to improve climate modeling called “Global Swarming.” The core idea is to deploy tens of thousands of ocean probes by leveraging the creative smarts and logistics coordination of the web.

As someone who served as an expert witness in the Dover “Intelligent Design” trial, and who has worked in the “creation-evolution” arena for a long time, if there is any interest I would be happy to run a session on “What happens post-Dover?” What will be the next wave of anti-evolutionism and anti-science? What needs to be done to combat it and raise the American public’s awareness of the evidence for evolution? Why is this issue critical to the success of basic research in this country? How do scientists, educators, and tech folks fit in?

I’d like to brainstorm about programmable matter ProgrammableMatter. Programmable matter is any substance which can be programmed to change its shape or physical properties. We are currently working on constructing programmable matter and investigating how to program it. I would be most interested in talking about how one might program ensembles.

I’d like to present on OpenWetWare, a wiki promoting open research among biologists and biological engineers. With 65 labs and 1200 users on OpenWetWare, I can provide practical examples of how scientists are currently making use of the web(2.0) to support research and education in new ways. I’ll also talk about where the site is headed in the future, and how foocampers could help make it easier for scientists to share more of their secrets online.

I’ll bring a memory stick with the recent radar images of what appear to be hydrocarbon-filled lakes on Saturn’s moon, Titan, and some movies from Titan. I’m also happy to discuss the interesting phenomenon of “instant public science” done by enthusiasts everywhere who have instant access to the latest space science data from the web. BTW, Nature magazine’s piece on exciting questions in chemistry (this week) included a mention of Titan, which should be on every organic chemists’ hit list for places to visit.

I am interested in discussing the dichotomy of design and evolutionary search as divergent paths in complex systems development. – jurvetson.blogspot.com

I could begin a session about Systems Biology, with a general theme of building towards whole cell or whole organisms models in biology. I have some (whacky) ideas about this in addition to having done some real science on this subject.

I could present about novel circuit-focused neurotechnologies I’m developing, for advancing the study of brain function and consciousness, and for treating neurological and psychiatric disorders. Although I’ve been exploring this question in academic research settings – and I’m gearing up to set up my own university laboratory – I’d like to brainstorm about how to build the significant community of clinicians, engineers, scientists, and psychologists that we’d need to make strong scientific progress on the timeless, unyielding problem of understanding the nature of consciousness.

I could talk about/demonstrate: digital fabrication in the lab and its impact in field fab labs around the world, mathematical programs as a programming model for enormous/unreliable/extended systems and their application in analog logic circuits and Internet 0 networks, and microfluidic logic to integrate chemistry with computation

I could contribute to a session on powerlaws in nature, markets and human affairs. They’re found nearly everywhere, from earthquakes to species distributions to cities to wars. We used to think the world was mostly defined by gaussian distributions (bell curves) with neat medians and standard deviations. But now we see that powerlaws, where low-frequency events have the highest amplitude, are far more common, and they’re infinite functions where concepts like “average” are meaningless. What are the factors that create powerlaws and what does nature have in common with economics and social networking in this instance?

I’d like to talk to the assembled folks about a project we are running to help scientists move large datasets without using the internet (which can be very slow or expensive.

I hope to demo a viral database and talk about efforts to build real time surveillance via the WHO.

I’d like to discuss the range of applications being discussed in HE (HigherEd) that permit faculty and research groups to store and share a wide range of scholarly assets, including research data, texts (articles such as pre-prints and post-prints), images, and other media. These next generation academic apps provide support for tagging, community-of-use definitions, discovery, rights assertions via CC, and new models of peer review and commentary. Early designs typically implicate heavy use of atom or gdata for posting and retrieval, lucene, and ajax.

I can offer a brief introduction to the Human Genome, and the field of Comparative Genomics which focuses on comparing our own genome to that of other species. I’ll try to give a taste of some of the startling revelations, seeming paradoxes, and many open questions that make working with this three billion letter string a ball.

I could offer the opposite point of view, looking at the very simplest organisms, what they do, how they work, and what life looks like when the genome fits on a floppy.

I would like to talk about the future of the scientific method. How the scientific method was one invention the Chinese did not make before the west, and how the process of science has changed in the last 400 years and will change even more in the next 50 years. I’d love to hear others’ ideas of where the science method is headed.

I could offer some (possibly naive) ideas on how we could design evolvability into the scientific process by learning from the evolution of cellular complexity. I can also include some examples from language evolution and software evolution.

I can describe our general approach for open collaborative biomedical research at The Synaptic Leap.

I have in mind a presentation related to my project on Milestones in the History of Data Visualization – an attempt to provide a comprehensive catalog documenting and illustrating the historical developments leading to modern data visualization and visual thinking. The talk might encompass some of (a) some great moments in the history of data visualization, (b) ’statistical historiography’: the study of history as ‘data’, (c) a self-referential Q: how to visualize this history. The goal would be more to suggest questions and aproaches than to provide answers – in fact a main reason to present would be to hear other people’s reactions.

As we’re on the topic of visualizations, I could give a talk about the rise of the geobrowser/virtual globe and how it is revolutionizing the geospatial visualization of information. I can showcase some of the best examples of scientific visualizations, show how geobrowsers are helping humanitarian causes and discuss the social-software aspect of Google Earth and other expected ‘mirror worlds’, where geospatial information is shared, wiki-like. Above all, I would love to brainstorm the possible use of geobrowsers in the projects of other campers.

I’m willing to give a talk about imaging projects in the Stanford Computer Graphics Laboratory, such as our large array of cameras, our handheld camera whose photographs you can refocus after you take the picture, and our work on multi-perspective panoramas (the Google-funded Stanford CityBlock Project). These projects are part of a trend towards “computational photography”, in which computers play a significant role in image formation.

I’m a Hugo Award-winning science-fiction writer, and I’m working on a trilogy (my 18th through 20th novels) about the World Wide Web spontaneously gaining consciousness once the number of interconnections it has exceeds the number in a human brain. I’d love to talk a bit about my ideas of how such a consciousness, at first an epiphenomenon supervening on top of the web infrastructure, might actually come to access the documents and input sources available online and how it might perceive external reality, and I’d love to brainstorm with people about what sort of interactions and relationships humanity might have with such an entity.

I could talk about the current and future generation of astronomical surveys that will map the sky every three nights or so (e.g. the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope). They are designed to be able to address multiple science goals from the same data set (e.g. understanding cosmology and dark energy through to indentifying moving sources such as asteroids in our Solar System). With hundreds of thousands of variable sources detected each year (on top of the ten billion non-variables) the flow of data presents a number of challenges for how we follow up these sources.

I could talk about insights gained as part of the NSF-funded Pathways research project (Cornell U, LANL) that looks at scholarly communication as a global workflow across heterogeneous repositories and tries to identify a lightweight interoperability framework to facilitate the emergence of a natively digital scholarly communication system. Think introspecting on the evolution of science by traversing a scholarly communication graph that jumps across repositories. I could also talk about work we have been doing with scholarly usage information: aggregating it across repositories, and using the aggregated data to generate recommendations and metrics.

I’d love to show the prototype of an NSF-sponsored web-based simulation designed to help students learn about the nature of science. I’ll bring the server on my laptop; we can all connect and play cosmologist. Advice welcome. More at NatureOfScienceGame

Making Open Access Affordable (free): There is a move afoot to put all science literature in the public domain (it is mostly funded with tax-free or tax money). There is a move afoot to put all science data in the public domain (ditto). These are unfunded mandates. We can not do much about the funding, but we computer scientists can do a LOT to drive the needed funds to zero by making it EASY to publish, organize, search, and display literature and data online. This also dovetails with Jill Mesirov’s approach to reproducable science – future science literature will be a multi-layer summary of the source data – words, graphs, pictures on top and derivations + data underneath. Many working on these issues will be at this event. We should have a group-grope.

Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) for small labs with BIG data. It is embarrassing how many scientists use Excel as their database system – but even more embarrassing is how many use paper notebooks as their database. New science instruments (aka sensors) produce more data and more diverse data than will fit in a paper notebook, a table in a paper, or in Excel. How does “small science” work in this new world where it takes 3 super-programmers per ecologist to deploy some temperature and moisture sensors in a small ecosystem? We think we have an answer to this in the form of pre-canned LIMS applications.

Related to this I could talk a bit about how our work on myGrid has been aiming at taking the escience capabilities offered to large well funded groups down to a more ‘grass roots’ level – grid based science is traditionally the realm of people and groups with serious money but we don’t think this has to be the case.

I could present a software demo of a new web-based collaborative environment for sharing drug discovery data – initially focused on developing world infectious disease research (such as Malaria, Chagas Disease, African Sleeping Sickness) with technology that should be equally applicable for scientists collaborating around any private or public therapeutic area. This demo is a collaboration initiated between Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc and Prof. McKerrow at UCSF which could shift drug discovery efforts away from today’s fragmented, secretive, individual lab model to an integrated, distributed model while maintaining data and IP protection.

Our present vaccine production infrastructure leaves us woefully unprepared to deal with either natural or artificial surprises – think SARS and avian influenza (H5N1), which can both easily outpace our technological response. There are superior technological alternatives that will not be widely available for years to come due to regulatory issues, and I would like engage the other campers on ways to address this problem. In particular, I would like to explore the potential contribution of distributed, low cost science – garage science – to improving our safety and preparedness.

The “Encyclopedia of Life” is a buzz phrase being bandied around by biologists – the idea is having an online resource that tells you what we know about each species of organism on the planet. It’s an idea that seems obvious, but how would we achieve this given the scale of the task (number of known species about 2 million, those waiting to be found maybe 2-100, we really don’t know), the rapidly dwindling number of experts who can tells us something about those organisms, the size of the literature (unlike most sciences, taxonomists care about stuff published back as far as the 18th century), and the widely distributed, often poorly digitized sources of information? I’d willing to chat about some of the issues involved, and some possible solutions

I would like to share briefly with you the results of a five year project to create and publish the world’s first totally integrated Encyclopedic vision of food – its origins, variations, complexity,nutrients, dimensions, meanings, enjoyment, history and a thousand and one stories about food. The result is a new kind of truly multidimensional Encyclopedia of Food and Culture that I edited with a whole team of scientists and scholars, and Scribner’s (Gale /Thompson) published in 2003. The Encyclopedia has been well reviewed and we won, among many awards, the Dartmouth Medal (the top prize in the reference world) in July 2004. I am bringing a three volume HARD copy with me and will put it on display at the “Table” for everyone to peruse at your leisure -(it is designed to ‘catch you’ – so if you are a browser and you love food you may have trouble giving it up for others to read!)I would also be delighted to talk about a new kind of World Food Museum that is designed to make the Encyclopedia come alive (please seem my bio statement for more).

I would like to present Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Citizen Science work as an example of several of the broader citizen science interests described in the Wiki. These include: Challenges of involving the public in data collection for professional research, scientific tradeoffs and possibilities, internet data collection tools, dynamic graphing and mapping tools, data mining, sustainability, webcommunity building plans for the future, and recruitment models within the contexts of conservation science and ornithology.
I would also like to demonstrate the new Pulluin software chip that fits in a TREO palm cell phone. It has a bird ID tool, lets you hear vocalizations, see pictures, and enter data into one of our citizen science projects, eBird. The ideal way to show you this toy would be to take interested campers on an early morning bird walk. If I can get enough signups, I will try to get eBird project leader, Brian Sullivan, to come up from Monterey, providing he is available. We would probably carpool to the shore to bird. If you are interested, email me and tell me which days, Sat., Sun., or both, you would be available.

Who are we? I’d like to give a short talk to argue for the importance of addressing an old question with a new meaning: What is it like to be human? Why do we dare, care and share? Why are we curious, generous and open? We have to deal with these questions before artifical intelligence, genetic engineering and the globalisation of cultures have changed us irreversibly. Many areas of activity in science, technology and the arts offer new perspectives: Sexual selection, algorithmic information theory, perception, nutrition, experimental economics, game theory and network theory, etc. They point to a coherent view of humans as flows and processes, rather than things and objects. Openness is essential. Attention is essential. Time is ripe for a new collective effort at producing a view of human being relevant to our age.

Robotics for the Masses – I would like to present two new technologies that we are public-domaining imminently. One is Gigapan, a technology for taking ultra-high-resolution panoramic images with low-cost equipment. We can generate time lapses of an entire field with enough detail to see individual petals in detail as they bloom and wither. The second is the TeRK site, which is designed to enable non-roboticists to make robots for tools without becoming robotics experts. I will bring Gigapans and TeRK robots with me and would love to show them doing their techie things. Both of these strands have the potential to be useful scientific tools.

Science, not near as much fun as math! :~) But without it the world remains untouchable. Do you want your child with maximum understanding? We better equip the rest to understand her, so that she is heard when speaking about this exquisite world. But how to reach as many as can be reached? Free is not near enough, full access comes close. The challenge is to deliver science, as the compelling, engaging, tantalizing world that it is, the very first frontier to cross into who we are. The quality of that experience needs freedom of expression. NASA World Wind is a bold step towards that. We are delighted to share the not-so-secret secrets thereof.

I could discuss how our fundamental discoveries on bipedal bugs and octopuses, gripping geckos and galloping ghost crabs have provided biological inspiration for the design of robots, artificial muscles and adhesives. I can include a demo of artificial muscles from Artificial Muscle Incorporated. I will bring two robots in development – a gecko-like climbing robot from our collaboration with Stanford and an insect-like hexapedal robot built by our UPenn colleagues. I will carry with me live death-head cockroaches that serve as our inspiration. I could facilitate a discussion of neuromechanical control architectures. I will introduce briefly our new center at Berkeley (CIBER – Center for Interdisciplinary Bio-inspiration in Education and Research) and a new journal – Bioinspiration and Biomimetics. I welcome this group’s creative suggestions not only for the next generation of robots, but also for novel designs using tunable skeletal structures, artificial muscles and dry adhesives

I would be interested in discussing and debating technical and nontechnical issue involving Social Semantic Search and Analytics. There is a significant interest in Social Search, and some interest in Semantic Search. Here is a scenario that probably involves more futuristic capabilities but a modest verion of this can lead to lower hanging fruits involving “little semantics” and “weak semantics” which would involve less infrastructure in creating and maintaining ontologies (albeit my experience shows building and maintaining large ontologies is doable, see Semantic Web: A different perspective on what works and what doesn’t: (a) a research paper is published ;Eg: Semantics Analytics on Social Networks www2006.org/programme/item.php?id=4068], (b) there is a popular press article with numerous factual errors and unsupported conjuctures e.g., this one, (c) there are several versions on popular web sites along with numerous blog postings containing emotional reactions See for example, (d) Tim O’Reilly digs into the facts and sets the record staight in Datamining Social Networking Sites. How can we track the string of these stories along various dimensions [thematic, spatial, temporal] while provding overview, ranking based on various criteria, contextual linking, insights on individual postings, and more? I am interested in more than clustering and linking through statistical analysis which are good to put some stories in font of a reader,but would not sufficiently help someone who needs to creat a cogent understanding of an event or a situation.

I’d like to discuss the planning of a Mountain View Consensus, in response to Bjørn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus, a ranking of where to spend money on the world’s biggest problems. The frustrating thing about the Copenhagen Consensus is that it is published as a report – so if you think the compund interest rate should be 2% higher, you can only speculate on what the effect would be of changing it. For the Mountain View Consensus we would publish findings as a collaborative spreadsheet, with annotations for the values that different participants place on each variable, and the opportunity for anyone to add annotations. Also, while Lomborg invited only economists, we would include scientists and engineers who understand the technologies, and venture capitalists who understand risk factors and chances of technology bets.

I have two projects I’d like to share at Science Foo–and i’m eager to hear your thoughts on how best to build and deploy them both:
1) An open source project–the Family Medical History Tool –that could graphically capture essential medical data and which could be shared by family members (with this goes a myriad of challenging issues around privacy, HIPPA laws, etc.
2) We’re initiating a “citizen science” approach to a retrospective clinical trial providing open and transparent results real-time. We believe that additional data could be rapidly collected to demonstrate a correlation between drug metabolism and genotype for the 2D6 gene and the drug tamoxifen. Preliminary data shows that 5-10 % of women who are 2D6 poor metabolizers taking tamoxifen (to avoid a reoccurrence of cancer) may be getting nothing more than a placebo effect, and worse, run a 3 times greater risk of a cancer reoccurrence.

I could give a talk and lead a discussion on the status and prospects for advanced nanotechnologies based on digital control of molecular assembly. I’d start by describing machines that already do this (in biology) and how they are being exploited to make nanostructures. I’d then outline a path forward to some very powerful technologies that today can be studied only by means of physical modeling and computational simulation. There are potential applications on a scale relevant to the climate change problem.

4 days talking about stuff like this and I may become a total Science geek, man!

Keeping Things Grounded

The other interesting article in the FNP I wanted to blog was about Lonza. In the event you didn’t see it, here ’tis:

Hitting the skyway

For Lonza, travel abroad broadens employees’ minds
Originally published May 21, 2008

By Ed Waters Jr.
News-Post Staff

	Photo by Ed Waters, Jr. Working for an international company often means moving around the world. For some employees at Lonza in Walkersville it means moving here, or to Switzerland or Brazil. From left are Lisa Middlebrook, Shawn Cavanagh, Alberto Aguilar, Edwin Davies, Marin Parenty, Stefan Schnydrig and Margot Connor.

A global company can only be successful with a global strategy.

That’s the view of Shawn Cavanagh, president and head of Lonza Bio Science in Walkersville.

As part of that strategy, Lonza is moving some workers into Walkersville and some out to other parts of the world.

“When you have a global strategy, you first need policies and procedures that support it, and secondly, have people who see different cultures, move around the company and see the world,” he said. “You have to act globally.”

It was just over a year ago that the Swiss firm Lonza acquired for $460 million what had been Cambrex bioscience division on Biggs Ford Road. About 500 people work at the site.

“Lonza put a lot of investment in Walkersville, unlike anything in the past 10 years,” Cavanagh said of the facility.

“It is a totally new dynamic for us in Walkersville,” said Cavanagh, who has headed operations since 2005.

It isn’t cheap to send people around the world. Only top performers and those with potential are chosen.

Cavanagh hopes employees will bring their experience to their leadership roles. He spends about 35 to 40 percent of his time out of the country. Next week, he will travel to Switzerland, then India.

One of the destinations for many is Visp, Switzerland, a site Cavanagh and others call “the mother ship.” It is Lonza’s largest facility, based in Basel, Switzerland, and supplies products to the pharmaceutical, health care and life sciences industries.

Moving out

Lisa Middlebrook began in Walkersville with what was BioWhittaker, before to the acquisition by Cambrex. She was part of the integration team that helped bring the culture of Lonza to the Walkersville site through her human resources expertise.

She’s done some traveling, but always lived in Frederick County. Soon, she and her husband and two sons will head for Basel, Switzerland, where she will become global head of training and development.

Her sons will attend the Swiss International School, where their lesson will be three days in German and two days in English.

“I expect them to be fluent at the end of the first year,” she said.

Middlebrook will provide leadership training and establish core courses for existing employees, as well training on corporate sales and marketing.

Alberto Aguilar and his family will head for Brazil. Onetime manager of international sales in Walkersville, Aguilar will become business director for Latin America, which covers everything from Mexico to Argentina.

“I’m basically in charge of the rest of the world,” Aguilar said, referring to what the company views as everything but the U.S. and Europe.

Aguilar has traveled to Latin America in the past, but remained based in Walkersville. His two children are excited about it, he said, but it will be quite a move for his wife. Originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico, Aguilar speaks Spanish and Portuguese.

Latin America has been a good market area, he said. Brazil has a strong economy and he is optimistic for growth in that region.

Moving in

Margot Connor is one of several Lonza employees who have moved to Walkersville from overseas. Formerly head of global communications, she will now head business development for Lonza LBS.

“I was living in New Jersey, working for another company when the opportunity came to join Lonza,” said Connor, who has spent the past two years in Basel in Germany.

Her new role will put her in charge of mergers and acquisitions — though it means as much looking at merging operations inside the firm as well as outside changes.

“This is a company where you have the opportunity to make any kind of career you want,” she said.

One thing she is investigating expansion in Walkersville. Although nothing is set, Connor said there needs to be more room to meet the growing demand for its products. That growth, she said, would be within the Walkersville campus.

“We are looking at the site plan for the long term, both in people and operations,” Connor said.

Stefan Schnydrig’s family has worked for Lonza in Switzerland for three generations. He grew up a mile from Visp, where Lonza is the biggest company.

Manging integration

As manager of human resources, he has been part of an integration team to change the way things are done in Walkersville to meet the policies and procedures of Lonza.

“It is always a challenge to balance how much you can align people with the corporate culture and what is not natural for them as Americans,” he said. “What works in one country won’t in another.”

Edwin Davies came to Walkersville as head of the integration team, but has since been appointed head of the Media Business Unit — “media,” as in the bioscience word for cell cultures used in research.

Originally from Wales, Davies joined Lonza in 2000 in Slough, outside London, coming to Walkersville with a wife and baby, and another one on the way.

He expects a lot of international travel, including to Asia, where the company is hoping to find new business.

“It is an exciting time to grow this business,” he said. “We have a challenging and aggressive growth target.”

Lonza not only uses the cell culture media, but sells it to industrial users.

“Sometimes we sell in small bottles, but for the industrial users, we sell in 1,000 liter drums,” Davies said.

For Marin Parenty, moving meant leaving Leon, in France, where he was Lonza’s head of European sales and marketing heading the cell discovery/molecular biology business unit in the U.S. His customers include the National Institutes of Health, Johns Hopkins University and the pharmaceutical industry, among many others.

“I’m concentrating on people doing research, not development,” he said of his clients. “We help them discover how cells talk to each other. We are at the forefront of research application,” Parenty said. “We sell re-agents, no fixtures or equipment for research.”

It is his first time working in America — he has worked in Italy, the United Kingdom and France — but he had visited the U.S. before.

“It is difficult to find someone today who has done all of his or her work in one place, even one country,” he said.

I know people have been checking my Rumor Mill page and I swore I would not start the first rumor, but this article makes you think.  I know quite a few people up at Walkersville and the shoe hasn’t dropped since the Lonza takeover.  I know the Swiss are not tolerant of excess in terms a scrap, people or real estate (for that matter).  Makes me wonder what plans are being devised for Lonza-Walkersville in the smoky board rooms in Switzerland?

News of the Day

There are a couple nice little articles in todays FNP business section.

There is an interesting story about a new web site that will take the mystery out of finding a job at Ft Detrick:

Website takes mystery out of job search at Fort Detrick

Originally published May 21, 2008

By Ed Waters Jr.
News-Post Staff

	ON THE WEB Fort Derick employment guide n www.frederickworks.com, click on Fort Detrick Employment Guide icon

Fort Detrick, the military base at the center of Frederick, is a campus full of agencies, contractors and businesses.

So how do you find a job there? To most people, it’s a mystery.

“If you look at the Fort Detrick home page, there may be only four or five jobs there,” said Laurie Holden, director of Frederick County Workforce Services.

“It is not comprehensive for all the contractors and businesses there,” she said.

After two years of working with various groups, Holden’s agency has added a Fort Detrick Employment Guide to its website, frederickworks.com.

“We went to groups such as the Fort Detrick Development Office, Fort Detrick Alliance, Human Capital System at Fort Detrick, Women in Defense, a lot of others,” Holden said.

Some of them had tried to solve the jobs search problem, but Holden said her agency finally decided to do it.

“We didn’t recreate anything, we simply organized it, took the mystery out of where to look and how to apply,” she said.

Holden said used the example of the value of the site after meeting a young man at a Christmas party.

“He was a West Point graduate, had served in Iraq, had a family, and was driving four hours a day for work in D.C. at the Department of Defense. The department is at Fort Detrick and I thought, ‘How can he apply for a job there?’ Happily, it did work out for him. He is working at Fort Detrick” Holden said. “I think of all those cars going down (I-)270 every day.”

The website features links to major employers and agencies, a section on how to apply for jobs and resources available at the Frederick County Workforce Services.

OK, I don’t mean to be a pain, because this is a great idea, but I have been all over the website. I was hoping to find a nice long list of openings.  At least this does provide links to a number of different sites that may open doors for some people.  Let’s hope it’s a work in progress that will improve over time.

I also want to give a shout out to Marie Keegan and the Fort Detrick Alliance.  This is a relatively new group that was established to build relationships between the Agencies at Fort Detrick and the local business community.  I plan on enlisting as a sponsor in order to benefit from some of the programs they offer and opportunities to work with groups doing stem cell research and regenerative medicine.

One of the interesting things I found on the Alliance web site was this press release by Blaine Young dated May 15th.  It looks like it was run in the Gazette, but I couldn’t find it anywhere.  I found it most entertaining:

Show support for the work done at Detrick

I support Fort Detrick and the job it has been doing to protect America from foreign threats for more than 70 years.

I have been thinking of the dedication and service that we have been given by the good people who have worked at Fort Detrick all these years as I prepare to attend Armed Forces Day on Saturday. The base will open its gates to the public and give us an opportunity to thank the men and women of the armed forces who keep us safe.

While I have been anticipating Armed Forces Day, I am reminded of how much I am disgusted by the actions of some of our so-called ‘‘leaders,” including the Board of County Commissioners.

Led by Commissioner David Gray, who has never met a NIMBY he doesn’t like, the commissioners have joined the faint chorus of a few narrow-minded individuals in protesting the expansion of the biodefense laboratories at Fort Detrick.

They have even managed to hoodwink U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski into asking the National Academy of Sciences to review public health and safety concerns.

All of this has been done, and no doubt motivated at least in part, to keep their names in the headlines in spite of the fact that an environmental impact study has concluded that the proposed expansion complies with all applicable laws and regulations.

So we are just going to have another government agency perform a duplicate study, at our expense, so that a few politicians can assure their NIMBY supporters that they are watching out for their selfish self-interests.

Shame on them. Here are some facts about Fort Detrick.

Like it or not, we live in a dangerous and sometimes evil world. There are people and groups, often supported by rich governments, who would use any means available to them to kill us in vast numbers if they had the ability.

Fort Detrick is our first line of defense against biological attack. Who are we to say that we are too good to have this important national mission accomplished right here on our home soil?

There are around 8,000 people employed at Fort Detrick, and with the expansion there will be another 1,400 jobs on the way. These are high-paying jobs, averaging more than $50,000 per year.

In case anyone hasn’t noticed lately, the economy is not exactly on an upswing. So not only do we have dedicated public servants right here in our home city and county protecting us from foreign attacks, but we have an extraordinary boost to our economy as a byproduct.

And yet all we seem to hear about Detrick is that local government should do everything in its power to stand in the way of progress at the base.

Commissioner Gray and his band of sycophants seemingly could care less about the broader purpose being served by the people at Detrick, or the impact on our local economy.

But what I don’t understand is why we haven’t heard more from the City of Frederick.

The city is the most direct beneficiary of the economic benefits spawned by the work done at Detrick. The time will never be better for the city government to contrast itself with the narrow-mindedness of the county commissioners on this issue, and come out in full support of Fort Detrick and the work they do for all of us.

I would urge them to take this action.

Any questions I may have had about what is being done, and proposed to be done in the future, at Detrick were answered by my good friend, Col. Mark Hoke, a former county commissioner.

Col. Hoke lives a quarter-mile from Fort Detrick. Anyone who knows the colonel knows he is a person who speaks his mind and is as honest as anyone could be.

Col. Hoke told me that concerns spouted by the opponents of biodefense expansion are ‘‘a crock of a well-known substance.”

He still keeps his hand in base planning through a support organization, and if he had any problem with what was being proposed at the base, there is no doubt we would hear it.

Yet, all we hear and read about in the local media are the shrill voices of the few opponents. People like Col. Hoke are ignored.

I want to close by repeating my support to the men and women who work at Fort Detrick and help keep us safe. And don’t forget that Saturday is Armed Forces Day. Come out and thank these good people in person.

OK, that’s enough for today.  I’ll blog about the other interesting article tomorrow…..

From Frederick to Belgium

I am always on the lookout for publications in recent journals from local sources, like groups at NCI-Frederick and other local companies. If you know of any and would like to publicize your publication, just drop me a line and let me know.

Looking for something entirely different, I came across this recent publication in the ILAR Journal:

It is a comparison by GSK-Belgium of different in vitro systems for MAb production and prominently features local company FiberCell Systems. They conclude that FiberCell’s HF system is a suitable replacement for tradition in vivo systems. That means many a nude mouse is spared in every MAb production run, as MAb are traditionally produced by inducing a renal (kidney) tumor in mice and extracting the ascites (tumor fluid). I probably shouldn’t be posting this over lunch.

Anyway, a few select excerpts from the article:

Industrial Implementation of in Vitro Production of Monoclonal Antibodies

Vincent Dewar, Pierre Voet, Françcoise Denamur, and Jean Smal

Vincent Dewar, Pierre Voet, M.S., Françcoise Denamur, B.S., and Jean Smal, Ph.D., are members of the Scientific Staff of GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, Rixensart, Belgium.

Abstract

Monoclonal antibodies are widely used at GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals (GSK Bio) for the quantification and characterization of antigens and for the release of vaccine lots. In 1998, GSK Bio decided to change the production of monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) designed for immunological tools from in vivo to in vitro technology. In 2004, all MAbs used at GSK Bio were produced in vitro. These MAbs cover more than 100 different targets with a variety of 1500 hybridomas, and approximately 60 to 90 MAbs are produced every year. This article describes the development process, including a description of the different systems tested based on double membrane or hollow fiber technology. The productivity, assets, and drawbacks of the different technologies are presented, and evaluation strategies for the choice of in vitro systems are discussed. Binding kinetics displayed by MAbs produced in vitro and in vivo were found to be similar, and MAbs produced in vitro are suitable tools for various immunological applications.

FiberCell.The FiberCell^TM (Fibercell Systems Inc., Frederick, MD) hollow-fiber cell culture system is composed of a culture medium reservoir (250 mL) and a 60-mL fiber cartridge (1.2 m²), both connected to a single microprocessor-controlled pump (Fibercell^TMsolo pump). It is possible to prolong the media supply cycles by replacing the original medium reservoir with a 5-L flask. In contrast to the Cell-Pharm® systems, the FiberCell^TM bioreactor is used inside a CO₂ incubator. Oxygenation occurs by a gas-permeable tubing.

Optimal inoculation of the system requires 400×10⁶ cells. One to two FiberCell^TM bioreactors together with the pump and the media reservoir can fit into a standard 180 L CO₂ incubator. Operation requires mid-level cell culture skills and a moderate investment. Production capacities, handling, and investment make the Fibercell^TM system suitable for routine MAb production units.

Discussion

During the introduction of in vitro methods for production of monoclonal antibodies at GSK Bio, the suitability for a given application was tested with each batch of MAb produced by in vitro technology and compared with that of MAbs produced by ascites tumors. New hybridomas generated after 1999 did not undergo such comparative analysis because the ascites tumor technology had been almost fully replaced by in vitro technologies. We report herein on our experiences with sp2/0-derived hybridoma cells cultured in various bioreactor systems. MAbs produced in vitro displayed similar binding kinetics to MAbs produced in vivo, and they were found be suitable tools for 12 different immunological applications (data not shown), including ELISA, Western blot, immunohistochemistry, affinity chromatography, FACS, as neutralizing antibodies, and in bactericidal or opsonophagocytosis applications.

A key factor for the choice of the appropriate in vitro bioreactor is the production capacity of the system, which must meet quantitative requirements at an affordable price. Concentration of the antibodies in the production medium is important when a small liquid volume is required to reduce the time needed for further purification. In addition, the concentration of MAbs obtained with a system should be applicable to immunological applications. It is also important to consider requirements for laboratory space, supplementary material, and technical expertise. Systems that operate outside an incubator save valuable space that can be allocated to alternative cell culture activities.

The productivity of an in vitro system depends on several variables, the most important of which are the culture conditions and the hybridoma cell line inoculated. For example, to achieve production quantities of 250 mg with low secretors (≤ 30 mg/mo; 250×106 cells), it is not advisable to use a suspension system due to the significant manpower and time requirements of that system (for adequate multiplication of the systems). In such cases, a more complex bioreactor that is based on hollow fiber technology is preferable for an economic production-to-investment ratio, despite the high starting costs and media consumption. Suspension systems are more appropriate for small- to medium-scale productions with hybridomas that are characterized by medium to high MAb production capacity (>30 mg/mo, 250×106 cells). In our laboratory, many laboratory-scale productions ranging from 10 to 150 mg have been successful using miniPERM or CELLineTM 1000, a system that requires little space and is easy to handle. Tecnomouse (1 cassette) and FiberCellTM (60-mL ECS cartridge) have been very convenient for productions ≥ 150 mg. CP100 was also suitable for medium-scale productions but at a higher expenditure in terms of preculture of hybridomas and set-up of the bioreactor. Although the Tecnomouse at its full capacity (5 cassettes) has not been tested, the most appropriate system for antibody productions beyond 500 mg has been the CP2500. It is advisable for a laboratory that is specialized in MAb productions to adopt several different in vitro methods to meet different needs.

Conclusion

In vitro bioreactor systems are a viable alternative to murine ascites for laboratory-scale MAb production. Various in vitro culture systems exist that are qualitatively equal to the ascites production method. It is generally accepted that in vitro production of MAbs is preferable to producing antibodies in ascites tumor cells (NRC 1999). Members of an official ethics committee might justify the use of the ascites method as an exception when, for example, hybridoma cells must be recovered because they have failed to grow in vitro, they have become infected, or the antibodies are needed for established therapeutic purposes. The existence of validated in vitro replacements for ascites in rodents has prompted governments in Europe to impose full or partial bans on animal-based MAb production. Although the in vitro MAb production technologies are more complex than in vivo ascites methods because they require additional cell culture, they have the clear advantage that animal pain and distress are avoided.

Ft Detrick Spring Research Festival

Just a reminder that the Annual Spring Festival is being held again this year at the Fort on Wednesday and Thursday this week (May 14th & 15th).

The event is open to the public, you just need to tell the armed guards ou’re going to the Spring Festival or the “Tent Show”.

If you’ve never been there, it’s definitely worth a couple hours time, either chatting with the vendors or Poster presenters. This year appears to be unusual because it seems like every year there is either torrential downpour, oppressive heat and even worse, both in combination. Standing in that tent is not pleasant in 100% humidity and 100 degrees.

I also like the theme this year: The Cancer Tree. They will be giving out free seeds, although it appears you’ll have to be a presenter or a exhibitor.

Here’s the story on the tree:

The Cancer Tree (Camptothecaacuminata)Our Spring Research Festival tradition is to choose something found in nature—plant or animal—that produces substances shown to have biochemical activity in fighting or preventing disease. In past years, we have featured the rosy periwinkle of Madagascar, Catharanthus roseus , the marine cone snail, Conus textilis, the African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis, the honeybee, Apis mellifera, and the gila monster (Heloderma suspectum and H. horridum). The “Cancer Tree,” a member of the tupelo family, is known by several additional non-scientific names: the Happy Tree and the Tree of Life. Those names are honestly earned. This is the tree that gave us the anticancer compound camptothecin, a substance found in the tree’s bark. The resulting drugs, topotecan and irinotecan hydrochloride are useful in treating breast cancers, ovarian cancer, colon cancer, malignant melanoma, small cell lung cancer, thyroid cancers, lymphomas and leukemias. The compounds, which have antiviral as well as anti-tumor properties, are also used for the treatment of AIDS. In 2002, the FDA approved another compound similar to topotecan as second-line therapy for certain cervical ovarian and lung cancers. The new compound, through regulating gene expression, can block growth of blood vessels that tumor cells need to survive. The tumor, deprived of its blood supply, can then shrink and die. The National Cancer Institute’s Developmental Therapeutics Program is responsible for the find. Giovanni Melillo, MD, together with colleagues Robert Shoemaker, PhD, and Nick Scudiero, PhD, devised a high-throughput screen for 2,000 compounds and found three other effective compounds in addition to the topotecan analog. The Cancer tree is native to China, growing up to 75 feet tall in warmer climates. In climates such as Maryland, the tree is easily grown from seed and can be kept indoors with ample warmth and bright light, when pruned to manageable size. The Spring Research Festival organizers, in a nod to both the cancer tree and to fostering biodiversity for the sake of research have ordered a supply of Camptotheca acuminata seeds, and will be awarding them to Festival participants. The recipients will receive instructions along with their botanic treasures to ensure that both have the best chances to live long and prosper.

USAMRIID Teams with Hopkins for Graduate degree at Ft Detrick

This looks like a pretty good opportunity for our “younger” readers out there.  The Job Search page continues to be one of the most popular on this site and I often wonder how many of these inquiries are from recent graduates?

In any event I saw a brief note in the FNP today and then pulled the original press release from Hopkins web site.  Here’s the skinny:

JHU Biotech Program, U.S. Army Enter
Collaborative Relationship
Agreement will expand educational opportunities in
biodefense research field

The Johns Hopkins University and the U.S. Army have agreed to work together to train scientists to develop vaccines and medicines to defend against biological attacks.

Students accepted into the program will study part-time to earn Johns Hopkins Master of Science in Biotechnology degrees with concentrations in biodefense. Simultaneously, they will work for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), located at Fort Detrick, Md.

Under a five-year agreement between Johns Hopkins’ Advanced Biotechnology Studies Program and USAMRIID, graduate students will be employed under the Army’s Student Career Experience Program and will be eligible for Army reimbursement of their Johns Hopkins tuition.

“Based on a long history of excellence in biotechnology research and education at both institutions, this is an invaluable cooperative effort that will significantly enhance the educational opportunities of our biodefense students,” said Richard McCarty, chair of the Advanced Biotechnology Studies program in the university’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences Advanced Academic Programs. “We hope it will lead to future interactions and joint scientific research between our respective faculty and scientists.”

Johns Hopkins advisors will work with students to select an appropriate course structure that will capitalize on the resources being offered by USAMRIID, such as research staff and laboratory facilities.

USAMRIID does basic and applied research on biological threats to develop vaccines, drugs and tests to protect soldiers, but much of the science it produces is also applied to civilian medicine.

“USAMRIID is very excited about sponsoring these master’s students and offering them the opportunity to work at USAMRIID on vaccines and therapeutics against extremely interesting pathogens,” said Peter Hobart, USAMRIID’s science director. “This is one more manifestation of the institute’s keen interest in working closely with colleges and universities to train the next generation of scientists.”

About the Advanced Biotechnology Studies part-time Master of Science in Biotechnology Program: Grounded in biochemistry, molecular biology, and cell biology, this program allows students to delve into pure science, applied science, lab science, regulatory affairs, and biotechnology enterprise. They can pursue a general master’s in biotechnology or focus on one of three concentrations that are available fully online: bioinformatics, biotechnology enterprise, or regulatory affairs. Concentrations in biodefense and molecular targets and drug discovery require some on-site instruction.

For more information about Johns Hopkins’ part-time graduate degree available through the Advanced Biotechnology Studies Program, please visit biotechnology.jhu.edu or contact our academic advisors:

Patrick Cummings, Senior Associate Program Chair Biotechnology 410-516-4724; cupat@jhu.edu

Dr. Kristina Obom, Associate Program Chair Biotechnology/Bioinformatics 301-294-7159; kobom@jhu.edu

Lynn Johnson Langer, Senior Associate Program Chair Biotechnology (MS/MBA, Bioscience Regulatory Affairs, and Biotechnology Enterprise) 301-294-7063; ljlanger@jhu.edu

IVGN announces Licensing deal with WARF

According to their web site today, Invitrogen has signed an agreement with Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) for Human Embryonic Stem Cells.

According to the release:

Under the terms of the agreement, Invitrogen will have the right to work with karyotypically normal hESCs to develop novel research and drug discovery tools.

“Invitrogen’s goal is the development of research tools that enhance the ability of scientists to work with embryonic stem cells and to enhance the utility of these cells for research and drug discovery,” said Joydeep Goswami, Vice President, Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine. “Having the ability to work with karyotypically normal hESCs through our license with WARF allows us to develop better technologies for research, such as more defined media and engineered stem cell lines. This agreement is another step in our strategy of pursuing advances in the high-growth area of regenerative medicine.”

This is interesting in several regards.  WARF appears to be holding it’s own in defending several patents related to hES cells, although the verdict is still out.

Perhaps more interesting is that IVGN’s RegMed group is, I believe, in Frederick.  At least Dr Rao, who is also a VP of the Stem Cell Group, is in Frederick.

OncoVAX Authorized by Dutch

In a press release yesterday, it was announce that Frederick-based Vaccinogen’s potential blockbuster colon cancer “vaccine” therapy has been approved for manufacture at their Emmen, Netherlands facility.

From the FoxBusiness web site:

FREDERICK, Md., May 7, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX News Network/ —-Vaccinogen Inc. said Dutch health authorities licensed it to manufacture its break-through OncoVAX anti-colon cancer vaccine, immediately clearing the path to more than $100 million of potential European sales.

The Dutch approval of the company’s facility based in Emmen, The Netherlands also paves the way to its pivotal US FDA Phase IIIb clinical trial — the final step before the vaccine can be sold in the United States.

“The facility can produce up to 3,500 vaccines annually, equivalent to $130 million in revenues,” said Michael G. Hanna, Jr., Ph.D., Vaccinogen CEO. “That number only scratches the surface of potential demand for a Stage II colon cancer vaccine. One of every three patients who have their cancer removed see it return — and the results are usually fatal.”

“Our experience with OncoVAX has resulted in increasing the patients’ chance of survival by more than 50%,” he concluded. “This represents an opportunity for a new lease on life for tens of thousands of patients around the world.”

The Dutch license permits the company to commercialize the vaccine, first in Switzerland and then in seven other countries in Eastern Europe. The OncoVAX vaccine represents a potential medical breakthrough because it uses a patient’s own cancer cells to prevent the cancer from returning after a successful operation to remove it.

The product is actually not a standard “vaccine” like you’d get for rabies or HPV or influenza.  These vaccines are produced and tested in large batches in fermenters and everyone gets essentially the same dose.  OncoVAX is actually an autologous vaccine, whereby a small section of the excised tumor is sent by the surgeon to the production facility where the tumor section is processed and made antigenic.  It is then injected back into the patient, where their own body produces antibodies to the tumor and kills it.

While Vaccinogen is not the only company working on this new era of “personalized medicine”,  they are among the first to pave the way through clinical trials.  This explains, in part, the extreme effort (in terms of $$ and time) it has taken to get this novel process through the rigors of FDA approval in the States.