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Who are you?
Tell us about yourself

Today we’d like to take a break from our usual scientific fare to ask about you, our...

Solar panels
Acting locally

Sanford-Burnham’s campuses in La Jolla, California and Lake Nona, Orlando, Florida have both...

Dr. Malene Hansen (right), pictured here with graduate student Philip McQuary, emphasizes the importance of mentoring during the postdoctoral training years. (Photo by Nadia Borowski Scott)
Science careers: from postdoc...

With competition for grant funding more intense than ever and academic job opportunities...

John Reed & Eric Topol on “The Creative Destruction of Medicine”

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In the latest episode of Medscape One-on-One, Sanford-Burnham CEO John Reed, M.D., Ph.D. interviews Eric Topol, M.D., author of The Creative Destruction of Medicine, about how technology is changing medicine, making diagnosis and treatment faster, better, and more accurate. In his book, Topol, chief academic officer of Scripps Health and director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, discusses this digital revolution and how it can change medicine for the better—but only if we let it or if we have the will to do it.

Click here to watch the full interview or read the transcript.

Presidential advisor John P. Holdren visits Sanford-Burnham at Lake Nona

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We’re always thrilled to have public officials visit our facilities in California and Florida, but last Friday was an especially exciting day for scientists and staff at Sanford-Burnham’s Lake Nona campus in Orlando, Fla. Dr. John P. Holdren, advisor to President Barack Obama, toured Orlando’s Medical City and spent time at the Sanford-Burnham site to learn about the promising research that is being conducted in our Diabetes and Obesity Research Center.

Dr. Holdren is assistant to President Obama for science and technology, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Congress established the OSTP in 1976 to advise the President and others within the Executive Office of the President on the effects of science and technology on domestic and international affairs. The OSTP also makes recommendations on the annual NIH budget.

Happy 2nd birthday to us!

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Beaker is 2 years old today!

On March 24, 2010, we published the very first blog post here on Beaker. It was about the excitement surrounding the generous $50 million gift from T. Denny Sanford that resulted in our name change from Burnham Institute for Medical Research to Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute—quite a milestone in the Institute’s history.

Since then, we have published 384 posts (an average of one post every 1.9 days!) by 17 different bloggers on subjects ranging from autophagy to zebrafish that make up 29 categories, including scientific topics as well as news about our people and events. These posts have racked up an impressive 397,653 page views by 231,347 unique visitors.

Readers of Beaker often continue the conversation with us by following us on Facebook and Twitter, and in turn, those outlets lead more readers to discover Beaker. For example, our Twitter profile @SanfordBurnham has grown from 175 to 1,418 followers and @SBI_Events has skyrocketed from 69 to 1,988 followers. Beaker posts have also made appearances in the San Diego Union-Tribune, La Jolla Light, ResearchBlogging.org, Nature’s ConferenceCast blog, and Florida Biotechnology News.

Thank you to all of our readers, fans, and followers! We look forward to connecting with you for many more years to come.

In the meantime, please enjoy reading (or re-reading) the top 10 most-read Beaker blog posts of all time:

Why the economy depends on federal funding for medical research

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When Sanford-Burnham CEO John Reed, M.D., Ph.D. traveled to Washington, D.C., in early February, he attended a variety of Capitol Hill briefings to discuss the importance of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for medical research. He pointed out that NIH grants account for approximately 80 percent of all funding for non-profit medical research institutions in the United States, such as Sanford-Burnham.

NIH grants contribute to the ultimate goal of developing new treatments for diseases and improving the quality of life for millions of Americans and people worldwide. The research supported by these grants also generates U.S. patents that fuel the biotechnology industry and creates thousands of jobs across the nation. NIH funding supports the training of our biomedical research workforce and strengthens the foundation of a 21st century knowledge-based economy.

Top 11 of 2011

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As 2011 draws to a close, we look back on our top 11 most popular blog posts published in 2011. Here they are…enjoy!

  1. How fatty diets cause diabetes
  2. Witnessing the birth of a new scientific field
  3. Two-faced nanoparticles and cancer
  4. Fighting fat with fat
  5. Crunching the proteome
  6. Science careers: from postdoc to PI
  7. Students find summer training opportunities close to home
  8. How cells sense nutrients and fuel cancer cell growth
  9. Getting to the root of Alzheimer’s disease
  10. What is “Disease in a Dish?”
  11. A new stem cell enters the mix

Happy holidays from Sanford-Burnham!

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See our scientists and staff spread holiday cheer in their native languages.

Sanford-Burnham’s “Two Cultures”

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A member of Sanford-Burnham’s faculty reflects on history, philosophy, society, and what it takes to get science done.

In 1959 the British physicist C.P. Snow delivered a lecture, and subsequently published a monograph, entitled “The Two Cultures,” describing what he saw as a growing divide between science and the humanities. Snow was afraid that science, spurred by the success of Sputnik, the resulting space race, the growth of nuclear technologies, and the very beginnings of the revolution in molecular genetics, would produce a culture that was impenetrable to non-scientists and in which scientists would be so specialized that they lacked the ability to connect with the rest of society. The publication was assigned reading for many university students at that time, and triggered many discussions about the balance between science and other aspects of society. Partly as a result of such discussions, a number of institutions of higher education were motivated to realign their curricula to make sure that science majors still learned about the roots of western civilization, including literature, art, and philosophy (with notable lack of foresight, nobody was thinking much about Asia in those days!). Oddly, in many cases this adjustment was not balanced by corresponding requirements that humanities students enroll in introductory science courses. These questions of academic focus have continued to be a source of debate, as universities continually struggle to balance their arts versus science programs.

Science careers: from postdoc to PI

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In theory, our system of advanced science education is designed to move students through graduate school and then postdoctoral training en route to taking their places as principal investigators (PIs) heading their own research laboratories. In reality, even in past years there were clearly more scientists being trained than there were openings for lab heads and faculty positions. To some extent this bottleneck was alleviated over the past two decades by the boom in the biotechnology industry, which has offered an outside-of-academia source of jobs for trained scientists. However, the slumping economy has hit the biotech industry just as hard as everyone else, with downsizing taking a large bite out of available industrial jobs. And now, with competition for grant funding more intense than ever and academic job opportunities increasingly scarce, postdoctoral researchers often feel that they are in a holding pattern waiting for the occasional faculty or industrial position to open up. How can postdocs deal most effectively with this situation in terms of preparing themselves to compete for rare openings?

On July 28, the Sanford-Burnham Science Network (SBSN), an organization of postdocs and graduate students, sponsored a discussion of the tricky transition from postdoc to PI. The session was chaired by SBSN leaders Dr. Caroline Kumsta and Dr. Rachel Wilkie, both postdocs at the Institute. Dr. Malene Hansen and Dr. Stefan Riedl, two young Sanford-Burnham faculty members, led the discussion by sharing their own steps leading from postdoctoral researcher to assistant professor.

What we’re reading: July 23, 2011

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Here at Beaker, we read tons of interesting stuff throughout the week, and we don’t always get the chance to blog about it all. Here’s a random list of things we’ve been reading lately:

Pollutants’ role in birth defects becomes clearer
Nature, July 18, 2011
Certain organic pollutants in the placenta (not just the mother’s bloodstream) will up the risk of a neural tube defect in a newborn.

Missing Gene Helps Mice Run for Hours
ScienceNOW, July 18, 2011
Research shows that mice lacking a particular gene will run six times farther than normal mice because their muscles tire less easily. These results may explain what separates endurance athletes from the rest of us.

J.K. Rowling’s characters turn up in medical literature, too
Los Angeles Times, July 16, 2011
Teachers and scientists are turning to Harry Potter to help explain complex information. A wizard born from two “Muggles,” for instance, exemplifies a recessive gene.

Whole teeth grown from molar stem cells in mice
CIRM Research Results blog, July 13, 2011
Stem cells from a mouse molar can grow into enamel to comprise an artificial, but functioning, tooth.

What We’re Reading: July 2, 2011

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Here at Beaker, we read tons of interesting stuff throughout the week and we don’t always get the chance to blog about it all. Here’s a random list of things we’ve been reading lately:

The Molecular Graphics Library
The Olson Laboratory, The Scripps Research Institute
An online gallery of 3-D protein models.

Healthier Ways to Grill Meat
Focused on Health, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, June 2011
Grilled meats may contain substances that increase your risk for stomach and colorectal cancer.

New Math in HIV Fight
Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2011
Scientists apply a statistical concept, commonly used to analyze stock market behavior, to fight HIV.

A New Look At Protein Misfolding
Chemical & Engineering News, June 6, 2011
Scientists find a new way to study protein structure in hopes the information will help them better understand protein evolution and human disease.

Repairing hearts
The Scientist, June 8, 2011
Researchers identify a group of adult cardiac cells that can regenerate heart muscle tissue.

Phage on the rampage
Nature News, June 9, 2011
Widespread antibiotic use may contribute to the rise of particularly dangerous strains of E. coli bacteria.

What We’re Reading: June 4, 2011

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Here at Beaker, we read tons of interesting stuff throughout the week, and we don’t always get the chance to blog about it all. Here’s a random list of things we’ve been reading lately:

Rare Germ Drives Outbreak
Wall Street Journal, June 2, 2011
and the related article, with a local twist:
Life Tech.’s sequencer identifies European E. coli

San Diego Union-Tribune, June 2, 2011

25 Best Blogs on Biomedicine
HealthTechTopia, May 31, 2011

Some Advice for the Lonely Students Standing By Themselves Next to Their Posters
Mike the Mad Biologist, ScienceBlogs, May 27, 2011

Scientists transform skin cells directly into neurons
Not Exactly Rocket Science, Discover Magazine, May 26, 2011
and for more on the same study:
How to make a human neuron
Nature News, May 26, 2011

Workplace Cited as a New Source of Rise in Obesity
NY Times, May 26, 2011

What We’re Reading: May 21, 2011

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Here at Beaker, we read tons of interesting stuff throughout the week, and we don’t always get the chance to blog about it all. Here’s a random list of things we’ve been reading lately:Cells may stray from ‘central dogma’
Nature, May 19, 2011

Stem cells: The growing pains of pluripotency
Nature, May 18, 2011

When Will Scientists Grow Meat in a Petri Dish?
Scientific American, May 17, 2011

Shuttle’s end spells change at NASA
Nature News, May 16, 2011

UCSD researchers find problem with stem cells grown from skin
San Diego Union Tribune, May 13, 2011

Free science, one paper at a time
Neuron Culture blog, Wired Magazine, May 11, 2011

Hazards of bed bugs – and getting rid of them
The Gleaming Retort, PLoS Blogs, May 11, 2011

More on the criteria for earing the Ph.D.
Drug Monkey blog, ScienceBlogs.com, May 11, 2011

Report suggests big payoff from Human Genome Project
GenomeWeb.com, May 11, 2011

Venter Institute prepping for construction next to Allen Field begins
La Jolla Light, May 9, 2011

Call Your Representative

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Let’s cut to the chase. The House of Representatives is considering a bill (HR 1) that would slash $1.6 billion from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s budget. That means there would be less funding for biomedical research, which means important investigations that might lead to new treatments would not take place.There are many reasons to oppose this legislation. The research funded by NIH grants eases human suffering. Between 1998 and 2007, 23 percent of new drugs originated in universities and research institutes supported by the NIH. Here are more than a few recent examples of research at Sanford-Burnham funded by NIH grants. Every day, our researchers make new discoveries with support from the NIH.

Beyond the moral issue of using our resources to help people, NIH funding has a profound impact on communities, including creating excellent jobs, supporting universities, generating spin-off companies (which in turn create more jobs) and other critical economic impacts.

The worst part is that these cuts will not save us money. They will cost us, both in the short and long run, especially the long run. For example, caring for people with Alzheimer’s disease is projected to cost $20 trillion over the next 40 years. The only possible solution is new, better treatments. And the only way we’re going to get there is by funding biomedical research.

Turning our backs now will be a very costly mistake, both in human suffering and economic impact. If you agree, please contact your Representative and encourage him or her to reject HR 1.

Tell us about yourself

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Today we’d like to take a break from our usual scientific fare to ask about you, our readers. On average, about 400 people, from all around the world, visit this blog every day. We’re a little bit curious about who you are and why you come here.

So, tell us about yourselves. Who are you? Where are you from? Do you work at Sanford-Burnham or perhaps another research institute nearby? Do you have a scientific background? Are you interested in learning about a particular disease or research topic? What brought you to our blog?

Please introduce yourself in the comments below and thanks for visiting.

Acting locally

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Sanford-Burnham’s campuses in La Jolla, California and Lake Nona, Orlando, Florida have both received Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the Green Building Certification Institute. Sanford-Burnham at Lake Nona is now the largest gold-certified independent scientific facility in Florida, and the La Jolla campus is the first to receive LEED certification for existing biotech laboratories in the region. These awards recognize innovations in eco-friendly design and construction, as well as our commitment to sustainability.