Friday Follies: MoCoBio on FredCoBio

I was reading a couple of things this morning about good stuff going on in FredCoBio.

Naomi Brookner/The Gazette
Researchers Sven Enterlein and Laura Abaandou look at DNA at Integrated BioTherapeutics of Germantown.

The first one is from the Gazette, with the glaring, sensational headline:  “EBOLA VACCINE UNDER DEVELOPMENT IN GERMANTOWN LAB”.  The story is about my former neighbors and friends at Integrated BioTherapeutics. Even though they moved to MoCo, I give them a pass because Sven & Eric live in Frederick. The article tells the tale of big funding IBT just won, but I do take objection to the haunting tone of the article.

By this I mean there’s no reason to bring up the whole “outbreak” scenario.    OK, no reason to bring it up, but let me put it all out in the open:

Careless handling of infected monkeys by humans and accidents in biotechnology laboratories is the main threat posed by Ebola to people in developed countries, although the virus is also seen as a potential bioterror agent, according to the World Health Organization. But most of the 1,850 reported cases and 1,200 deaths recorded since Ebola’s discovery in 1976 through 2005 have come among Africans in mid-continent nations.

The disease kills 30 percent to 90 percent of humans infected by it, preceded by symptoms that include the sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. Patients with advanced cases suffer vomiting, diarrhea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function and, in some cases, internal and external bleeding.

Anyone who read Richard Preston’s 1995 non-fiction best-seller “The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story,” which tracks the virus from its African victims to Fort Detrick, where researchers and biohazard teams worked to contain an outbreak, might expect a similarly tense atmosphere at Integrated BioTherapeutics. But scientists and technicians in one of the company’s laboratories appeared relaxed as they worked last week. Aman and Warfield said the employees do not face any risk from the virus.

Experiments using the virus itself are conducted only at Fort Detrick, they said. Work at the Germantown laboratory includes testing the vaccine on mice that have not been infected. Aman said the effectiveness of the vaccine is checked by examining how the immune systems of animals react after receiving the vaccine.

Warfield said two Russian scientists accidentally infected themselves on two separate occasions a few years ago and died from the virus. Another scientist, at Fort Detrick, was unharmed in 2004 after an accidental needle prick from a syringe containing the virus, she said.

There, I’ve done it. Highlighted the highlights I didn’t want people to talk about. I am sure this article isn’t going to bring exactly the kind of attention these guys need to help them with their research, but the $65MM bucks ain’t going to hurt…

The other story I found interesting, which I am kind of surprised isn’t getting a little more press, comes from Army.mil/news.  It’s a great story and I would suspect all of the Project Management came out of USAMRMC at Ft Detrick.  One of the companies, TraumaCure, is just down the road in Bethesda.

Army medicine improves with new dressings

Oct 17, 2008
BY Sarah Maxwell, Medical Research and Materiel Command

WASHINGTON — The Army continues to improve battlefield medicine by sending two new first-aid products into theater that will potentially save more Soldiers’ lives, said Army medical officials at a Pentagon press conference Oct. 15.

Test results from the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command’s Institute of Surgical Research showed the field bandage Combat Gauze and the WoundStat granular powder both demonstrated marked improvements over what’s currently used in the field said Col. Paul Cordts, Office of the Army Surgeon General.

“These products improve survival, result in less blood loss and improved post-injury blood pressures,” said Cordts.

Excessive blood loss is the number one killer on the battleground, and both products are hemostatic and have the ability to stop bleeding or hemorrhaging quickly in wounds where tourniquets can’t be used, said Cordts.

Measuring three inches by four yards, the gauze uses kaolin to stop the bleeding and the WoundStat is a package of granules that reacts with the blood to form a barrier, preventing more bleeding.

In this conflict more than 92 percent of wounded troops survive their injuries in combat – the highest percentage of any war, according to the U.S. Army Medical Department.

Master Sgt. Horace Tyson, a combat medic, said he attributes the high number of people being saved to the advanced tools the Army provides medics — like hemostatic dressings.

Having recently returned from a 15-month assignment in Iraq as the senior enlisted manager in a battalion aid station in the heart of Baghdad, he said he saw first-hand the benefits of dressings with blood-clotting capabilities.

“I categorize these products as lifesavers for us,” said Tyson, who now works as a senior operations manager for the USAMRMC.

A servicemember can “bleed out”, or hemorrhage to death, Tyson explained, within minutes of being hurt.

“The bandages make the difference between a (Soldier) having no chance of living because he’ll bleed out in five minutes versus me getting him to an aid station within 20 minutes and him staying alive,” said Tyson. “Without the bandages he could be dead.”

With 19 years of experience and four deployments in conflict areas under his belt, Tyson said he’s seen the Army’s scientific research drastically improve medics’ tools and training.

“If we’re going to get something else better for the battlefield, that’s great,” he said.

About 270,000 Combat Gauze was ordered and is expected to be in theater by the end of the year, said Lt. Col. Sean Morgan from Program Executive Office Soldier, the agency fielding most of the bandages. More than 17,000 packages of WoundStat will also be working their way to the field.

Not only are the new dressings expected to save more lives, they also bring significant cost savings to the government, said Cordts. Combat Gauze is less than $30 per dressing compared to currently-used HemCon bandage that uses chitosan from shellfish to stop blood and costs $88 per bandage. WoundStat is also less expensive than the QuikClot granules it replaces.

The Army plans to equip combat lifesavers to carry three gauzes, and eventually every Soldier will have one in their Improved First Aid Kits, said Cordts. Combat medics, who are highly trained in emergency trauma will also be given three gauzes, but will be the only ones to carry WoundStat since it requires more medical expertise to use.

Although the new hemostatic dressings are promising great improvements, Dr. David Baer, ISR’s director of surgical research, said it doesn’t mean the Army isn’t still looking for the next line of products that could offer even more improvements. ISR scientists looked into 20 to 25 other dressings in the last few years before they discovered the Combat Gauze and WoundStat, and he said they will continue their efforts for even more cutting-edge products to save lives.

“The way I think about it is the HemCon was better than the plain gauze, this (Combat Gauze) is better than the HemCon, and it can get incrementally better,” said Baer.

FredCoBio @ Chamber of Commerce’s October Business Outlook Seminar

As I noted in a previous post, I attended the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce’s October Business Outlook Seminar on Friday morning. As reported by Ike Wilson in the Frederick News-Post on Saturday, the Commissioners were all quite optimistic about our future.  I wanted to highlight a couple of things from my notes that weren’t featured in FNP article.

I found it significant that while residential building (as measured by the number of building permits issued) was down by 20% over last year, commercial building continues to increase (up about 8%, I believe).  The theme seemed to be that a big reason for this is that Life Sciences and Biotech are drivers of growth in FredCo.

As examples, NBACC, FITCI, Lonza and the groundbreaking Nov 12th of the new NCI 340K sq. ft. facility were all sighted asexamples of this sucess.  Sadly, Invitrogen was left off the list.  They are expanding, although there may still be fewer people there today than when Invtirogen laid everyone off in 2000 and moved operations to San Diego.  They have since realized this was a big mistake and are back up and running.  And how about our friends a SABiosciences?  With their beautiful new facility at New Design & Excecutive Way (extended recently), they are worthy of note.

Many of these are examples of off shoots of Ft Detrick that are pollinating the County.

E coli video

This video reminds me of the people tryng to block the BL3-4 facilities at Ft Detrick

Ignorance, plain and simple.  A prime example of how most people do not understand simple elements of science.  I like to think we’re more educated and sensible than people in this video here in Fred Co.

Oh, by the way, the facility was dedicated last week.  Staff are being recruited and hired and should start moving in in the next 6 months, as long as the protestors don’t impeed progress.

Here is the current list of openings from the BNBI web site:

<!–JOB TITLE (post date here)

–>

Bacteriology Research Asst (Bacterial Growth) (#182) (10/24/08)

Biosafety-Biosurety Specialist (#183) (10/24/08)

Electron Microscopy Manager (#166) (5/1/08)

Facility Coordinator (#184) (10/24/08)

Information Technology Manager (#174) (6/10/08)

Microbiologist (#181) (9/29/08)

Molecular Biology Research Assistants (#170-171) (5/1/08)

Program Management Specialist (#179) (8/7/08)

Sr. Program Management Specialist (#178) (8/7/08)

Virology Specialist (#175) (6/25/08)

Botox Discovered at Ft. Detrick

OK, no reason for alarm.  Most of it’s being shipped to California anyway.  Yet another example of how Frederick has superior technology than California.

Oh, and did someone forget to tell you that according to Comissioner Jan Gardner “50% of the world’s biomedical scientists are in Maryland. Of those, 40 percent are affiliated with the National Cancer Institute in Frederick County.”  I took this quote from the Frederick News-Post, but I was there too and have it in my notes. But I’ll give Ike credit for the endorsement. Perhaps I’ll blog my take on the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce’s October Business Outlook Seminar tomorrow.

So, if Jan Gardner’s data are accurate, this means that 20% (or 1 out of 5) biomedical scientists in the world work in affiliation with NCI-Frederick.  How can anyone despute we’re bigger and better than Montgomery County, let alone the rest of the world?!  I don’t want to get carried away, because I think there may be a little skewing of the data.

And speaking of skewing of the data, let me get back to my point.  I meant to say Botox was discovered in Frederick at Ft. Detrick.  From a nice little article on dcmilitary.com:

Botox was discovered at Fort Detrick

By Chad Baker

Special to Standard

Through out the history of Fort Detrick’s many discoveries have been made which have changed the course of microbiology and the whole scientific world.Another discovery which started in the laboratories of Fort Detrick and ended at a State College in Wisconsin is improving the quality of life for individuals who suffer from Dystonias, sever facial muscle spasms. Professor Edward Schantz and his discovery of Botox have changes the lives of those suffering from this disease.

Schantz’ discovery began when he was a commissioned officer working at Fort Detrick in 1944. His task was to determine whether botulinum, the cause of the deadly disease botulism, could be used by the enemy against the Allied troops.

The United States military was concerned about the toxin because of its extreme virulence. It is, to this day, one of the poisonous substances known to man. The toxin is 250,000 times as toxic as a cobra’s venom.

After completing his studies at Fort Detrick, Shantz deemed the toxin to be unfit for a biological attack. This he claimed because of the conditions it requires to grow. Without an absence of oxygen and a specific temperature the toxin will not grow nor become virulent.

Some time after the close of this experiment, a California surgeon, Dr. Allan Scott, contacted Schartz looking for a paralyzing toxin. After deliberation he concurred that Botulinum Toxin in small doses would work as a paralyzing agent. This set in motion Schantz’s studies of Botulism as a treatment for muscle spasms.

After the cession of the biological weapons program in 1969, Schantz retired from the laboratories at Fort Detrick and accepted a professorship at his Alma Mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

With the help of the director of the Food Research Institute, Schantz set up a lab where he could continue his studies on the Botulinum Toxin as a disease treatment.

With the support of the college and his own lab space Schantz, in 1979, was able to brew a 200 milligram batch of the toxin to continue his research. After perfecting the correct dosage for a human, 30 picograms or one billionth of a gram, his discovery was ready to begin its final stages of study.

Ten years later, in 1989, the Food and Drug administration licensed Schantz’s batch of the toxin as a drug. The license, issued under the Orphan Drug Act, approves treatment in humans for certain Dystonias and for experimental use on other hyperactive muscle disorders.

Although the Botulinum Toxin does not cure the conditions of Dystonias, it certainly improves the quality of life for people who suffer from it.

Research continues on Botulinum today. For all of the support, Schantz donated $120,000 of his award to the FRI.

Frederick Nano-Shuttle to Maui

According to a press release picked-up by PharmaLive:

SAIC-Frederick, Inc. and Silicon Kinetics Partner to Study Advanced Protein Interaction Applications in Cancer and AIDS Research

FREDERICK, Md., October 21, 2008-National Cancer Institute contractor SAIC-Frederick, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Science Applications International Corporation (NYSE: SAI), and Silicon Kinetics, Inc., a San Diego-based biotechnology company with research laboratories in Maui, Hawaii, announced a research and development agreement in proteomics to better understand how proteins interact in cancer and AIDS and how drug interventions affect protein interactions.

The Protein Chemistry Laboratory at SAIC-Frederick will employ a research plan to study extracellular binding domains of proteins involved in cancer and AIDS disease progression, utilizing Silicon Kinetics’ 3-Dimensional, label-free SKi Pro^TM Biomolecular Interaction Analysis Platform. The platform is the world’s first label-free system of its kind, employing an innovative combination of nano-porous silicon and precision optical interferometry to enable highly sensitive and versatile studies of proteins on 3-D biosensor surfaces.

Biomolecular Interaction Analysis on 3-dimensional biosensor surfaces is a highly innovative, new step forward in proteomics, which has the potential to provide new insights into cancer disease processes and the development of targeted therapeutics for cancer and infectious diseases.

“SAIC-Frederick values the opportunity to work in partnership with Silicon Kinetics on this exciting and enabling technology platform. We look forward to significant advancements in our proteomics technology and cancer and AIDS R&D programs through this collaboration, “said Dr. Robert Fisher, Head of Protein and Proteomics SuperGroup, and Director, Protein Chemistry Laboratory at SAIC-Frederick.

“Silicon Kinetics is pleased to join efforts with SAIC-Frederick, which has some of the most experienced researchers in biomolecular interaction analysis,” said Hus Tigli, President and CEO of Silicon Kinetics. “We are looking forward to making joint contributions to cancer and AIDS research.”

The partnership was formed under the National Cancer Institute’s Advanced Technology Partnerships Initiative (ATPI), which aims to further NCI’s mission by speeding the translation of research discoveries into new treatments for patients with cancer and AIDS. SAIC-Frederick, as prime contractor at the National Cancer Institute at Frederick, is facilitating ATPI partnerships for the government.

I am trying to figure out exactly how the SKiPro gadget works.   Looks like a microwave oven? The technology combines nano-porous silicon with “Optical Interferometry.”  Try saying that 3 times fast.  The simple meaning for Optical interferometry is combining two or more light waves in an optical instrument in such a way that interference occurs between them.

From Silicon Kinetics web site:

“Light reflected off the top silicon surface interferes with light which passes through the porous region, then reflected off the bulk silicon bottom. Biomolecular interactions in the porous region change the index of refraction in that region, creating shifts in the interference pattern, which correlates directly with the rate of biomolecular interaction of interest.”

Guess that’s why I am a bio guy, because that still means nothing to me….

FredCoBio joins the Personal Genome Project

Laura Rauch for The New York Times
George Church leads the Personal Genome Project and is one of its first 10 participants.

In another non-local story, today the Harvard’s Personal Genome Project released the results of the so-called “PGP 10″ (see this NY Times story, which I think requires free registration).  I met a number of the PGP 10 at Scifoo.  I even ate lunch one day with George Church.  I had no clue who he was, but he was a nice enough introverted science guy.  His hair is a bit lighter whiter than in the picture on his bio.

Anyway, I registered myself today.  They are looking to sequence DNA from 100,000 people, assemble the data in a public data base “to speed medical research by dispensing with the elaborate precautions traditionally taken to protect the privacy of human subjects. The more genetic information can be made open and publicly available, nearly everyone agrees, the faster research will progress.  In exchange for the decoding of their DNA, participants agree to make it available to all — along with photographs, their disease histories, allergies, medications, ethnic backgrounds and a trove of other traits, called phenotypes, from food preferences to television viewing habits.”

I am not a nudist, but you take take a peek at my DNA if you’d like.  You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.

So what are you waiting for?  REGISTER TODAY!

UPDATE 10/22:  Another good story on topic from Nature

Weekend Updates

I read a couple of interesting things you may not have seen last week, but didn’t get around to posting them.

The first one from the FNP reports Layoffs at SAIC-Frederick:

SAIC-Frederick lays off employees

Originally published October 16, 2008

By Ed Waters Jr.
News-Post Staff

While the workforce at SAIC-Frederick has grown to 1,791, the company did have layoffs in July.

Twenty-two employees in the Biopharmaceutical Development Program lost their jobs, said Frank Blanchard, a spokesman for the company.

Six of the 22 accepted positions in other SAIC-Frederick programs, Blanchard said.

The employees were assisted by the Frederick County Job Service, he said, and SAIC’s Human Resources assisted in outplacement services.

Blanchard said no projects were eliminated. The reduction was based on overall allocation of funding within the Developmental Therapeutics Program.

SAIC-Frederick works with the National Cancer Institute-Frederick on developing treatments for cancer and AIDS.

The company was recently awarded a contract worth up to $5.2 billion from the Department of Health and Human Services to continue operations and technical support to NCI.

Blanchard said there are no other layoffs anticipated at SAIC-Frederick at this time.

That seems a bit odd as the last thing we heard about the Biopharmaceutical Development Program was that it was thriving. Can anyone out there shed light on the situation?

The next is a bit of news from FITCI from the Gazette’s spcial Business section (you can get the whole link (PDF) HERE).  Dr. Garner (disclaimer, a business partner of mine), was featured on the cover of the insert accompanied by a nice write up. The interview is fairly brief, but there are some quotable quotes like:

Q What do you find most challenging in your current position? A: There are a number of different
challenges on the administrative side of a biotech company. You face not only the problems associated with general business, but the problems of scientific research. And they clash oftentimes.
You have the business side saying, “We have to make money, money, money,” and the scientific side saying,” We have to get the right answer no matter what it costs.” Getting those two parts of the
industry to work together efficiently toward a common goal is probably the most challenging part of the day-to-day operations.

Also in the Gazette feature, there is a large add on the inside cover about a variety of jobs available at Lonza Walkersville.  I pulled these off Lonza Web site this morning:

2008316 Administrative Assistant II- Cell Discovery and Molecular Biology R&D

2008287 Financial Analyst

2008285 Core Technician I Media Filling 3rd Shift

2008284 Operations Technician I- Media Filtration

2008281 Analyst I, Microbiology EM QC Testing Services

2008273 QA Administrative Assistant Temp to perm

2008230 Cleaner Cell Therapy

2008204 Junior Software Engineer, RTS R&D

2008205 Operations Aide I Media Finishing

2008089 Senior Scientist, Rapid Testing Systems

2008089 Senior Scientist, Rapid Testing Systems

2008078 Scientist I or II – Protein Production Medium Team Lead

If you’re interested you can go straight through the web site or drop me an email with your contact information and I’ll pass you through to the Aerotek guys who are doing a lot of the recruiting.

Antimatter and antipasta at the anti-conference

I came across John Gilbey’s write up of SciFoo in a local periodical.  John was one of the first people I met there, in the lobby at the hotel, chatting on the bus ride over to Google and dining with Larry Page on the first evening.

He’s a writer & photographer, so his prose is much better than mine.  I’m sure he took some nice pictures, too, but haven’t seen those, yet.

Here’s the article, from Times Higher Education:

2 October 2008

John Gilbey was on first-name terms with Nobel laureates and all the other ‘campers’ at Science Foo, a three-day intellectual free-for-all that left him exhausted but elated

Academic science conferences have a distinctive structure, a warm envelope of familiarity that gives a reassuring – if bland – environment more or less wherever in the world you pitch up at one.

Except SciFoo, that is. This wildly unusual event is now in its third year and – as I can testify – provides a very different user experience.

When I received the emailed invitation my first thought was, “Yeah, right, who are they trying to kid?”, and I hovered the mouse pointer over the delete button. Why would anyone invite me, a poor and relatively minor character in the broad canvas of higher education, to one of the most exciting, sexy events in the research calendar?

But then there were the “what ifs”. What if the email was real? What if they really wanted me to attend? What if I passed up what could turn into the trip of a lifetime?

I had already read blogs about Science Foo Camp – to give it its full name; I even knew someone who had attended. Fighting against the conspiracy theorist and computer geek in me, I took a closer look at the invitation.

A rummage through the email header revealed only that it came from a server located at one of the three sponsors of the event. This wasn’t quite enough to satisfy my deeply cynical nature, so I bounced the mail to my friend at Nature Publishing who had attended the year before, pointing out that someone was playing a cruel joke on a simple country lad.

His reply was almost instantaneous. Yes, it is real – honest. Yes, you must go – it is an incredible experience.

The concept of SciFoo is brilliantly simple, with an elegance verging on genius. You invite 200 wildly varied people from around the world with an acknowledged personal commitment to science to a venue in the middle of the grey suburban blur that is Silicon Valley, California. You provide them with accommodation at a local hotel, food, meeting rooms and logistical support – then you instruct them to go off and talk about science for the weekend.

Yes, it is a type of conference, but with one vital twist: there is no programme, no fixed agenda beyond the bare bones of meal breaks, bar openings and transport to and from the hotel. Nothing important gets decided about what will be discussed until everyone meets up on the Friday evening.

It describes itself as an “un-conference”, and the idea behind it stems from the widely held belief that the best part of any conference is the spontaneous discussion and networking that happens outside the programmed event, usually late at night in the bar when everyone has relaxed, had a few drinks and let their hair down.

Reading blog entries from previous years, it was clear that the delegates – or “campers” in the vernacular – had had a tremendous time and that they were a wide-ranging bunch that included some seriously clever, influential and famous people.

This was reinforced when the SciFoo Wiki published the list of this year’s campers, which featured at least four Nobel laureates, a bunch of prominent media names, billionaire industry gurus and enough research leaders to start your own university.

I instantly succumbed to a Wayne’s World sense of deep unworthiness. Fortunately, I was able to spot a few others who, like me, appeared to be there for the weird stuff they have published – science fiction stories, in my case – rather than their raw intellectual power.

Arriving at the almost mythically cool Googleplex in Mountain View – Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters – the registration scrum seemed familiar (including goody bag and T-shirt), but the name badges revealed the plot.

Big first name, small second name, no honorific titles and no affiliation. This turned out to be crucial: what you have to contribute is much more important than who you are. When the chance came to introduce yourself to the assembled throng, you were restricted to three words: a rule enforced with a large gong.

After a briefing on etiquette, a beer and a buffet, the delegate group descended mob-handed on the agreeably low-technology noticeboards that formed the blank schedule. Prospective speakers networked in real time to build sessions with other like-minded individuals and then grab a room of feasible size.

With multiple parallel sessions running, it was inevitable that you would miss far more than you could ever hope to attend. The decisions were often painful: should I see the world-famous cosmologist or the planet’s leading science comedian? Comedy won and I was rewarded with an astonishingly funny stand-up session by Californian Brian Malow.

Typical joke: “I went into an Italian restaurant and saw that they kept pasta and antipasta in the same display cabinet. Are they freakin’ nuts?” I had never seen so many scientists helpless with mirth.

I wandered into an absorbing talk by astronomer and Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno about the Vatican Observatory and the meteorite collection in his charge, along with some lesser-known contextual stuff about Galileo and the role of the Catholic Church in research and higher education.

Meanwhile, on the terrace outside the main building a pre-production flying car – or “transitional vehicle” – was furling and unfurling its wings before a delighted audience. Alongside, two high-performance electric cars were showing how out of date my views on the technology were.

Guided tours – no pictures inside – of the Google facility demonstrated the benefits of a different industry culture: no coder works more than 100ft from food and coffee (all free, except for the really wicked stuff, which is charged on a “badness” index). Conspicuous use is made of non-traditional business resources such as the beach basketball court and vegetable garden, even at the weekend.

In the lobby of one Google building, a model of X-Prize-winning SpaceShipOne hung in a stairwell, while outside, the skeleton of a T. rex stalked the shrubbery, adding more than a hint of Hollywood to the proceedings.

With seriously talented science researchers, purveyors of advanced technology, original thinkers and people of extraordinary vision present, the discussions were free, wild and radical. Because of the wide range of backgrounds, no one felt awkward about asking really naive questions; they simply pitched in. Sadly, the breadth of discussion was so great that there were entire areas I never even managed to touch on – a common frustration among the campers.

The sessions were intense – the spaces between them more so. Long meal and coffee breaks saw a rash of impromptu events such as modelling swarming behaviours in robots, and a round of caffeine-fuelled networking by people desperate to meet as many fellow campers as possible before we ran out of time.

Organisation was the key to getting the best out of the meeting, and the logistics were managed with charm and humour by a party of young folk from Google and the other sponsors, publishers O’Reilly and science journal Nature. It was a delight to see so many wildly intelligent, keen, sparky people have such a good time while doing their job so effectively.

The concepts discussed at SciFoo were big, as were some of the projects pitched for discussion, criticism and support. The sheer weight of expertise in such a small space meant that if the skill you needed wasn’t in the same seminar room, it wasn’t many feet away.

Take, for example, the Beagle Project: a research and public engagement initiative to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. The plan is to build a replica HMS Beagle, beginning in 2009, and use it as the focus for a series of research projects linked to school and community events during a circumnavigation that loosely mirrors the original voyage.

Those who attended the briefing by Beagle Project director of science Karen James pitched in with offers of technical, operational and financial help. One contributor nipped out of the room to grab the email address of a potential benefactor from a mutual friend.

Then there were the space-based projects. With the Nasa Ames Research Centre just around the corner – literally – it wasn’t a surprise that a strong contingent of space interests was present. This included at least one International Space Station astronaut and centre director Pete Worden. Aside from the practical experience that this contributed to otherwise largely theoretical discussions, it was absorbing and humbling to hear first-hand accounts of programme management processes in really big projects where human life is routinely at stake.

At the end of the third day, crazed from lack of sleep and overexposure to brilliant, exciting, intriguing people, I sat and looked at my scattered notes and the pile of treasured business cards with something close to despair.

Not even the strongest coffee the hotel offered at breakfast (“Zulu Blend – Coffee for Warriors”) could supply me with sufficient caffeine to let me begin to summarise what I had experienced.

It took me a couple of weeks, and an almost spiritual retreat to the wilds of Yosemite, even to start to build a coherent picture of this enormously impressive event. But bear in mind that each attendee was asked to nominate three people to attend a future Science Foo. Who knows, next year it might be you.

Postscript :John Gilbey teaches computer science, writes science fiction and will be appearing in pantomime this Christmas. He gratefully acknowledges the support of Aberystwyth University.

The Econonmy and Fred Co Bio

I attended the FITCI Fall Seminar Series yesterday at FCC.  The Topic was “Funding- Where, When, and From Whom to Get It”.  The speakers were Robert Linthicum – PNC Bank,  Steve Carchedi – Zoom Intelligence, Ron Kaese – TEDCO &  Frank Dickson – DBED Challenge & Enterprise Funds (select the links to open their Presentations).  At the end of the presentations, someone asked how the downturn in the Economy would effect funding and financing of start-ups.  Banks are tight now, due to shortage of money, but the prime is coming down.  Banks are always the pickiest sources of funding in any event.  The TEDCO & DBED guys are pretty sure that as Tax revenue dwindles some funding cuts are inevitable.  But Steve, speaking on behalf of Angle and VC investors, doesn’t expect much of a change at all.  Angels are investing their own money, money which they already have in the bank.  VC’s are generally on a schedule to invest a certain amount of money over a set period of time, which probably won’t change that much.

One area of “financing” popular in our Biotech arena was not represented.  Federally funded research, like NIH Grants and Grants through Military, DHS avenues.  I cannot overstate the impact that this has on our region.  The whole DC region is really somewhat “recession proof” because we are so dependent upon Federal Government money.  Many of the Incubator tenants came out of Ft Detrick with an idea for commercialization/development, like our friends at IBT who just won a huge deal for as much as $65MM.  And who isn’t pounding the doors at the Fort Detrick Business Development Office or jumping on board with the Ft Detrick Alliance?  If you’re not and you operate a small business, then you should!

These conversations reminded me of a couple of things I read lately.  Last week I had intended to blog Jason Balog’s bit in the FNP.  Then I ran into him at the Greater Baltimore Tech Council Tech Night last week, so now I need to make amends. From his article:

So what is keeping the industry going? The answer is simple: Big Pharma/Big Biotech with their need for products and the cash to pay for it. Traditionally Big Pharma/Big Biotech was innovative, bringing new products to market and always on the cutting edge of development. However, as the cost of development has skyrocketed and the internal pipeline for new products dried up, Big Pharma/Big Biotech has been forced to find its products and pipeline elsewhere. Furthermore, many of the blockbuster drugs that have made Big Pharma/Big Biotech billions are coming off of patent protection, and the revenues associated with such blockbusters are about to be lost to generics.

Therefore, Big Pharma/Big Biotech is caught in the never ending search for the next blockbuster drug and the revenue that comes with it. According to Deloitte Recap LLC, $78.9 billion of merger and acquisition deals have been completed in 2008 versus a total of $32.2 billion for all of 2007.

At the current rate, the amount of money changing hands in merger and acquisition transactions in 2008 will be triple the amount in 2007.

And yesterday I was following a bunch of stories through FriendFeed and read a really great little bit by Nat Torkington, who I met at SciFoo and blogs for O’Reilly, called “Effect of the Depression on Technology”.  His main point is that this “depression” is Good for Innovation:

..This recession will be good for innovation because recessions generally are. During boom times, companies direct development and occupy great talent with at best evolutionary improvements over the state of the art. Companies are great chasers of new things, but aren’t great at making new things. A recession means technologists cease to be paid vast amounts to duplicate the work of others.

Another indirect effect (I left as a comment on his post and copy here) is that as companies cut-back to maintain profitability, they tend to slash workers. This liberates a great many brilliant people who have many ideas for commercialization, pollinating the landscape with new entrepreneurs and small companies.

So what better place to be than in the Biotech market in Frederick County in this day and age?  Insulated from the economic downturn by Federal funding or customers who are running off federal funds. Being wined & dined by Big Pharma and investors who want to hang the Biotech banner on their flag post. Surrounded by a blossoming entrepreneur network liberated from the fold because their ability to create value for their organizations was never realized and their ability to innovate attenuated by the short-sighted need for capital preservation.

Welcome to Frederick County, the land of Opportunity.

Invitrogen’s new Stem Cell initiative

I was reading about a new Stem Cell service Invitrogen is offering in Genetic Technology & Engineering News:

Sep 23 2008, 12:18 PM EST

Invitrogen Initiates Stem Cell Culture Service

GEN News Highlights

Invitrogen introduced its PD-Direct® Bioprocess Services optimized for clinically compliant stem cell culture systems. It will help stem cell therapy developers reduce risks through serum-free production systems, improve manufacturing productivity, and provide on-demand expertise in stem cell media development, according to the firm.

The science of each stem cell type is different and complex, and off-the-shelf products may not enable therapeutic developers to achieve their goals without significant additional investment, Invitrogen points out.

PD-Direct® stem cell culture services provide identification of substrates and enzymes that support cell growth and passaging, determination of cell nutritional and supplementation needs, optimization of complete media formulations for key performance and cell characteristics, IP management strategies, design of formulations for clinical compliance and supply chain risk mitigation, as well as transfer to GMP formulation and manufacturing.

Upon closer examination, it looks like at least a portion of this work will be going on in Frederick under the leadership of Dr. Florence Wu.  From her Bio, it sounds like they’re bringing in some Bioreactors and such.  It’s been so long since I have been in 7335 Executive Way.  I am sure I wouldn’t recognize the place.

We used to do all of our mammalian cell culture in an insulated closet lined with racks of roller bottles, but that was long before Bioreactors were popular.

There’s a bit more information on their web site.