Bio-X moves off the
drawing board: $7 million awarded for facilities
BY MARK SHWARTZ
 Stanford's pioneering Bio-X project moved
into high gear this month with the awarding of $7 million
in grants for the construction and upgrade of biological
research facilities throughout the campus.
The grants are the first
to be handed out since October 1999, when Silicon Valley
entrepreneur Jim Clark donated $150 million to launch
Bio-X -- an unprecedented, faculty-run program designed
to give Stanford a leading role in the burgeoning fields
of biotechnology and biomedicine.
Still in its formative
stage, Bio-X is being administered by six committees made
up of 42 faculty and staff from three schools --
Medicine, Engineering, and Humanities and Sciences.
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In February, the Bio-X
Core Facilities Committee sent e-mails to all faculty
members urging them to submit proposals for matching
grants to upgrade or construct new bioresearch
laboratories in existing buildings throughout the campus.
Of the two dozen proposals
sent to the committee, 17 were approved in May, says
committee chair Chaitan S. Khosla, an associate professor
of chemical engineering and chemistry.
In the spirit of Bio-X,
the committee awarded grants to faculty and staff from
such diverse departments as psychology, chemistry,
physics, mechanical engineering and genetics. Each grant
averages about $412,000. Among the projects to be funded
are the following:
- Electron Microscopy
Facility, an upgraded laboratory located in
Herrin Hall that will provide new, state-of-the
art electron microscopes worth hundreds of
thousands of dollars.
- Tissue Bank, a new
facility to be developed in the Department of
Pathology that will give researchers a central
resource for obtaining, storing and experimenting
with human and laboratory animal tissues.
- Cognitive
Neuroscience Facility, a new, million-dollar
center that will enable researchers to analyze
brain function and thought using computational
neuroimaging, eye-tracking equipment,
electroencephalograms and other cutting-edge
technologies.
- The committee also
agreed to help fund new facilities for cell
imaging, X-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic
resonance and small animal imaging. (See list of grants and awardees.)
"This is
phenomenal," says psychologist John Gabrieli,
principal investigator for the Cognitive Neuroscience
Facility. "It gives a huge boost for the
neurosciences on this campus."
Gabrieli is one of three
psychology professors from the School of Humanities and
Sciences who joined with 10 researchers from the School
of Medicine to request matching funds to establish one
the most advanced neuroimaging centers in America.
Although the facility
itself will be housed in the Medical School's Lucas
Center, Gabrieli says it will attract psychologists as
well as faculty from the School of Engineering and many
other departments involved in neurological research.
"I'm impressed that
the facility is not going to be restricted to people
involved in Bio-X, but will be available to all
faculty," he notes.
In addition to obtaining
matching funds, Gabrieli and other grant recipients will
be required to create a website listing key personnel and
services at their new facility.
To maintain high standards
and promote interdisciplinary access, every facility also
will be obligated to form an oversight committee that
includes at least one faculty member from each of the
schools participating in the creation of Bio-X --
Engineering, Medicine, and Humanities and Sciences.
"This is a very
grassroots effort involving all the faculty in all three
schools," says James A. Spudich, a professor of
biochemistry who chairs the Bio-X Executive Committee.
"In the long run, the
Bio-X program will facilitate all interdisciplinary
sciences on campus," he adds. "It should become
a way of life here."
Charles H. Kruger, dean of
research who serves on the Bio-X Advisory Committee,
points out that "the deans of the three schools and
I have been meeting on a regular basis."
"That's a reinforcing
aspect for me," Kruger notes. "Rather than
being divided by parochial interest, people can come
together for the shared interest of the university."
Bio-X concept
"We will
fundamentally change the way science and technology is
done on this campus," predicts Channing Robertson,
who also serves on the Bio-X Executive Committee.
Robertson, a professor of
chemical engineering, says that initially Bio-X will
concentrate on five general research themes: tissue
engineering; single molecule analysis and molecular
structure; cognitive and systems neurosciences; imaging
from molecules to humans; and biocomputation.
"The science that
will be done hasn't been done elsewhere," he notes,
adding that Bio-X research will have both theoretical and
practical applications that fall "somewhere between
the atom and the bedside."
Bio-X began two years ago
when Spudich, Robertson, Nobel Prize-winning physicist
Steven Chu and other professors organized a grassroots
effort among faculty to promote interdisciplinary
research and teaching in bioscience, bioengineering and
biomedicine.
"We called it Bio-X
because we never came up with a name that was short
enough to describe the global nature of what we want to
do here," Spudich says. "It's really a
philosophy, not a specific program."
From the beginning, he
says, the goal has been to break down the walls
separating people involved in cutting-edge bioresearch.
For example, through
Bio-X, an electrical engineer might be given lab space
with a neurologist to develop miniature brain implants
that will allow blind people to see. Or a developmental
biologist could team up with a mechanical engineer to
figure out how to grow livers and other replacement
organs from ordinary human stem cells.
Last October, the Bio-X
concept became reality when former engineering professor
Jim Clark, the founder of Netscape and Silicon Graphics,
announced his $150 million donation -- the largest single
gift to Stanford since the founding grant in 1885.
A few months ago, an
anonymous donor pledged an additional $60 million,
raising the Bio-X commitment to $210 million, of which
the university has set aside $120 million to construct
the James H. Clark Center for Biomedical Engineering and
Sciences.
Groundbreaking for the
225,000-square-foot Clark Center begins this summer along
Campus West Drive near the Medical School. Faculty
representatives have been meeting with architects to come
up with a unique design that will encourage accessibility
and flexibility inside the center.
"The goal is to be
very open, to have far fewer walls than in a typical
research facility," says Alice P. Gast, professor of
chemical engineering who chairs the Bio-X Design
Committee.
"Intermingling these
different cultures from different departments is an
exciting opportunity for us," she adds.
The final design for the
Clark Center will be unveiled sometime this summer, and
the building should be completed by 2003.
"The center will be a
forever," says Harvey Cohen, a professor of
pediatrics. "Ultimately, that's how Jim Clark will
be remembered. But Bio-X is so much more to me than the
Clark Center."
Cohen chairs the Bio-X
Interdisciplinary Initiatives Committee, which was given
$3 million in April to fund new, interdisciplinary
programs focusing on bioresearch, education and product
development.
So far the committee has
received nearly 80 proposals from a wide array of faculty
members, including a law professor who wants to start a
bio-ethics project. Other proposals include a program to
teach researchers how to use the latest medical devices,
and a seminar series on cardiovascular surgery to be
conducted by surgeons and mechanical engineers.
The committee is now
assessing the proposals, which range in value from
$25,000 to $100,000, and will announce the grant
recipients later this year.
"I look at this as
venture capital dollars in academics," Cohen says.
"If 20 percent of these projects turn out
successful, it's going to be a tremendous bang for the
buck."
Although Stanford is often
credited with spawning the high-tech computer revolution,
Cohen predicts that "Bio-X will take Stanford into
Silicon Valley in a way where what you see today is
really small stuff."
He envisions a partnership
between industry and academia that will produce dramatic
innovations integrating biotechnology and biomedicine
with computer science.
"We're poised for
that here at Stanford," Cohen maintains. "There
are very few places in the country that have so many
outstanding scientists in such close proximity to a major
medical center."
Educational component
"Students are the
lifeblood of this project," says Robertson, noting
that the Bio-X Education Committee was established to
create a new curriculum bridging departments across the
campus.
"I'm really excited
about the intersecting of physics, engineering and basic
life sciences," says Education Committee chair
Sharon Long, a professor of biological sciences.
She points out that
committee members are in the process of determining which
interdisciplinary courses already exist on campus and
whether new ones should be created by 2001.
The committee is also
looking at alternate, less formal educational offerings,
including the continuation of the monthly Frontiers in
Interdisciplinary Biosciences seminars that Bio-X
initiated last fall.
The seminars, often
featuring prominent researchers from Harvard, Yale and
other leading universities, use clever titles to attract
students and faculty from widely different fields.
For example, an April
seminar was titled "Smelling with Hairy Little Noses
and Feeding with Hairy Little Legs."
Before each seminar, the
speaker provides a two-hour class explaining the topic of
his or her presentation in terms that are easy to
understand.
"We want to do
everything we can do to break down the barriers between
disciplines, which is often just a matter of learning
each other's language," says Spudich.
The next seminar, called
"Robustness, Necessity and Biological
Complexity," will be presented by electrical
engineer John Doyle of Caltech at 4 p.m. June 1 in Room
200 at the Teaching Center of the Science and Engineering
Quad.
Bio-X also has been
sponsoring a series of Saturday symposia in which several
experts join together to discuss specific topics such as
tissue engineering.
Faculty recruitment
Since Jim Clark's
announcement last fall, the Bio-X program has attracted
international attention, especially in academic circles.
"Bio-X has become a
real drawing card for Stanford," notes Spudich,
adding that prominent faculty from other institutions
have expressed interest in joining the Bio-X project.
One leading scientist
recruited in part because of Bio-X is Axel Brünger, a
professor of molecular physics and biochemistry from
Yale, considered one of the world's foremost
crystallographers. Brünger will be coming to Stanford
with a triple appointment: in neurology and in molecular
and cellular physiology along with a faculty position at
the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL).
SSRL also received one of
this month's 17 Core Facilities grants to improve its
X-ray crystallography system.
"There are always
going to be people who are skeptical of Bio-X, but I
consider it an experiment," says William C. Mobley,
professor of neurology and a member of the Bio-X
Executive Committee.
"I hope in 10 years
it's gained the respect and loyalty of the faculty. It
could change everything at Stanford." SR
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