UB, Hauptman-Woodward land $22.5M renewal from National Science Foundation (New York: 2015, houses)

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A five-year grant renewal from the National Science Foundation will bring another $22.5 million to Buffalo for life science research.


The grant continues work by the University at Buffalo and Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute in the area of X-ray lasers. It follows an initial $25 million grant in 2013 that created the BioXFEL Research Center, one of the research centers funded through NSF’s Science and Technology Centers: Integrative Partnerships program.


Venu Govindaraju, vice president for research and economic development at UB, said the renewal confirms Western New York’s leadership in the areas of X-ray crystallography and structural biology.


“BioXFEL Center scientists have made revolutionary advances in just a few years, using X-ray lasers
to probe phenomena previously hidden from view,” he said. “With these incredibly powerful new tools, they are helping us better understand some of society’s most intractable health and science problems.”


HWI, a nonprofit research organization known internationally for its work in X-ray crystallography and structural biology, houses BioXFEL on Ellicott Street on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. Other partners include Arizona State University, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Stanford University, Cornell University, Rice University, the University of California, San Francisco and Miami University in Ohio.


BioXFEL, short for Biology with X-ray Free Electron Lasers, uses X-ray free electron lasers, which produce intense X-rays in extremely short pulses, said Edward Snell, BioXFEL director, president and CEO of HWI and a professor in UB’s department of materials design and innovation in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.


“X-ray lasers provide two huge advantages over conventional methods,” he said. “They are intensely bright beams that allow us to see much smaller things, like nanocrystals. And their pulses are incredibly short, which allows us to see critical processes, like how drugs bind, at rates as fast as a billionth of a billionth of a second.”


Over the last 20 years, HWI has generated 180 million images from experiments used by crystallization centers and major pharmaceutical companies. The work with BioXFEL has also led to collaborations with Google Brain to promote the use of artificial intelligence to hasten new discoveries.


The technology has also been used for research on antibiotic resistance; reducing the amount of samples needed for analysis; and molecular studies for new materials.


Source: https://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/...ewal-from.html

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A related article...

Research activity skyrockets at UB

Federally funded clinical trials conducted through the University at Buffalo have seen a substantial uptick in the last three years, the result of a long-term effort to break down barriers within the university and a dedicated outreach effort in the community.

That led to an associated increase in the number of Western New Yorkers enrolled in UB clinical trials. In 2015, UB enrolled 1,334 patients in such trials. That number increased to 2,210 in 2017. University clinical research spending increased from $10.9 million to $14.4 million during that span.

The trend has a substantive impact on the community.

“You can’t get these treatments unless you are in a clinical trial,” said Dr. Peter Winkelstein, executive director of UB’s Institute for Healthcare Informatics. “So it’s a tremendous opportunity to bring the best therapies to Western New York. It’s good for the patients, good for the university and good for the companies we partner with to improve health care.”

Winkelstein is a professor of pediatrics in UB’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and the chief medical informatics officer at UBMD Physicians’ Group.

University leaders said efforts to build a more comprehensive and inclusive system for winning federal grants began in 2006, with a failed effort to win a Clinical and Translational Science Award from the National Institutes of Health. Since that time, there has been a marked change in UB’s effort regarding health sciences research and education.

The UB Clinical and Translational Research Center joined with Kaleida Health’s Gates Vascular Institute and the nonprofit Jacobs Institute to open a $291 million building on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus in 2012.

The UB center received word in 2015 that it won a $20 million CTSA grant, the same award for which it was rejected in 2006. Dr. Timothy Murphy, senior associate dean for clinical and translational research, said earlier this year that the UB center has played a major role in attracting up to 20 new department chairs and researchers.

UB opened the $375 million medical school building late last year, an initiative that included increasing class sizes and recruiting faculty members with a documented history in winning research funding.

External collaborations have also been a point of emphasis. UB, UBMD and Kaleida have built a regional database of more than 1 million patients while university officials said they strengthened collaborations with such entities as Erie County Medical Center, the Western New York Veterans Affairs Health Care System and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.

“This substantial increase in research activity at UB is a result of all the changes this institution has made in a variety of areas to foster better health care in our community,” Murphy said. “Those efforts signaled UB’s strong institutional commitment to growing clinical research with a multimillion-dollar investment that allows us to fully support and perform world-class clinical research. Now they are paying off.”

Source: https://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/...ets-at-ub.html

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More on research that occurs at UB: Research - University at Buffalo