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

by on April 4, 2012 at 2:13 pm | 0 Comments
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Dr. John P. Holdren tours Sanford-Burnham's Lake Nona site

Dr. John P. Holdren tours Sanford-Burnham's Lake Nona site

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.

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Why the economy depends on federal funding for medical research

by on February 22, 2012 at 3:03 pm | 0 Comments
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NIH Funding

NIH funding is crucial for medical research

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.

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Call Your Representative

by on February 16, 2011 at 10:05 am | 4 Comments
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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.

Where Structure Meets Function

by on September 30, 2010 at 10:06 am | 2 Comments
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The human genome project taught us a lot about the number and sequences of our genes, but not a whole lot about what they do. In the years since, scientists have been using that genomic information to examine the structures of proteins, the molecules that carry out our genes’ instructions (see DNA 101). Structural information is being used to answer biological questions about protein function – how they facilitate chemical reactions, carry molecular signals in and out of cells and control cellular movements. There’s a growing need to understand how multiple proteins work together to accomplish all that and more.As part of their Protein Structure Initiative (PSI), the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) at the National Institutes of Health has awarded a five-year, $6.8 million grant to a team led by Sanford-Burnham’s Dr. Robert Liddington and Stanford University’s Dr. W. James Nelson. PSI was formed in 1999 to help researchers establish the structure of more proteins, faster. Now in its third phase, called PSI:Biology, PSI structure determination centers are partnering with scientists like Dr. Liddington and Dr. Nelson to address important biological questions linking a protein’s structure and its function.

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Core Grant Renewal Continues a 30-Year Legacy

by on September 28, 2010 at 3:39 pm | 0 Comments
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Sanford-Burnham’s Cancer Center has received a five-year core grant renewal from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The renewal, which runs through 2015, will provide more than $21 million to support advanced cancer research, a 21 percent increase over the previous grant. Sanford-Burnham has been an NCI-designated basic research Cancer Center since 1981, one of only seven in the nation.

“NCI Cancer Center designation is a national benchmark, and our renewal with an “outstanding” rating confirms the exceptional quality of cancer research at Sanford-Burnham,” says President Kristiina Vuori, M.D., Ph.D. “The significant budget increase we received is a tremendous honor and a reflection of the hard work and dedication by faculty and staff throughout the Institute.”

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Heart team gets pumped up

by on September 28, 2010 at 8:21 am | 0 Comments
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A collaborative team led by Dr. Gabriel Haddad at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), which includes Sanford-Burnham’s Dr. Rolf Bodmer, Dr. Pilar Ruiz-Lozano, Dr. Karen Ocorr and Dr. Giovanni Paternostro, was awarded a $10 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health. The team will research the molecular response to low oxygen levels – a condition known as hypoxia– in heart, lung and brain cells.

“This funding will allow us to develop powerful predictions of how the human heart and other organs can be protected from hypoxia-inflicted injury by studying both fruit flies, which are very tolerant to low oxygen, and mice, which are less tolerant,” explains Dr. Bodmer, professor and director of Sanford-Burnham’s Development and Aging Program.

According to Dr. Paternostro, adjunct assistant professor, ”This grant will allow us to continue our work on the systems biology and metabolomics of hypoxia, an ongoing collaboration with Dr. Haddad and with the other scientists participating in the funded project.”

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Big boost for HIV research

by on August 16, 2010 at 1:41 pm | 8 Comments
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A research team led by Dr. John Young, professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and Dr. Sumit Chanda, associate professor at Sanford-Burnham, was awarded a $21 million Program Project Grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This funding will allow the team to analyze the innate immune response (the body’s earliest defenses) against HIV infection using a systems biology approach. This large-scale initiative aims to increase our understanding of all the body’s cellular and molecular factors that work together to respond to HIV-1 infection and how these factors influence a patient’s prognosis.

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A Coming Together of Cancer Centers

by on August 4, 2010 at 9:35 am | 0 Comments
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A group of top researchers from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC) gathered with their Sanford-Burnham counterparts in La Jolla last week to seek ways the two Cancer Centers could collaborate to translate basic research into new medicines.

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Influenza and nanomachines

by on June 25, 2010 at 2:30 pm | 2 Comments
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Drs. Sumit Chanda and Erkki Ruoslahti have received write-ups at two very distinct sites. Dr. Chanda’s flu research, which was published in February in Nature, was recently highlighted by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, one of the National Institutes of Health. The work, a collaboration with Mount Sinai , Salk and GNF, identified 295 human proteins and other molecules  that influenza A strains must harness to infect a cell.  As the article points out,  the flu virus contains only 11 proteinsand must rely on our own cellular machinery to keep going. In many ways, these host factors may be better targets for treatment.

Current flu drugs are aimed directly at the influenza virus. But the flu virus mutates readily and these frequent changes allow it to gain resistance to antiviral drugs. However, if a drug were to be targeted to factor in the human host instead of being aimed directly at the virus, the pathogen’s ability to escape through mutation would be thwarted.

Meanwhile, Dr. Ruoslahti, who cofounded the Sanford-Burnham, UC Santa Barbara Center for Nanomedicine, was quoted in an article about robots at CNBC. Dr. Ruoslahti has been working with engineers at UC Santa Barbara to create nanorobots to home in on diseased cells.

“At this point, we can increase the activity of any anticancer drug by three fold or better,” he says. “We get more drug to the tumor and that makes a huge difference. If you can increase its concentration, the side effects remain the same, but the effectiveness is higher.”

Dr. Harold Varmus to be Nominated to Head NCI

by on May 19, 2010 at 2:26 pm | 0 Comments
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Nobel laureate and former National Institutes of Health director Dr. Harold Varmus will be nominated by President Obama to head the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Dr. Varmus, received the Nobel for his work on the genetic basis of cancer and has been President and Chief Executive Officer of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center since January 2000.

“It is hard to imagine someone more qualified for this position,” said Sanford-Burnham President Dr. Kristiina Vuori, who also directs the Institute’s NCI-designated Cancer Center. “Dr. Varmus will bring to the NCI a significant appreciation for how basic science serves as the foundation for new cancer cures. His leadership will accelerate the pace of discovery research and the translation of those discoveries into life-saving cancer prevention, detection and treatment.”

Prior to heading Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Dr. Varmus conducted research at the University of California, San Francisco, Medical School, where he, Dr. J. Michael Bishop and colleagues demonstrated the cellular origins of the oncogene of a chicken retrovirus. This discovery led to the isolation of many cellular genes that normally control growth and development and are frequently mutated in human cancer. For this work, Drs. Bishop and Varmus shared the 1989 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.