What’s the real value of research?
For sure, it has helped us live longer lives, and better ones. It has produced higher crop yields and made our food supplies safer. It supports environmentally friendly practices to keep the planet spruced up, it contributes to national defense and national security, it helps cut down on youth violence in schools and improve small-business performance. It’s hard to think of any aspect of our lives that hasn’t been touched in some way by what takes place in the lab, in the field or under the microscope.
But there’s another value, as well. The better we get at it, and the more we do here, the less reliant we become on legacy business sectors like manufacturing. For every complaint that “We don’t make anything anymore,” there is a counter-argument: “A decade ago, we weren’t doing a lot of drug reformulation, bioinformatics, or genome research here, either.”
From all indications, the Kansas and Missouri bi-state region is taking significant strides toward strengthening its economy through development of the life sciences sector.
For just one measure of how that new economy is shaping up, look no further than Columbia. The University of Missouri represents but one sliver of the regional research assets, yet estimates that its combined research programs produce an economic impact of $440 million in the state, and support more than 9,000 jobs. Last year alone, MU filed 45 patent applications, and since 2000, faculty expertise there has yielded one new startup company, on average, every 120 days.
Multiply that by what takes place at Kansas State and the University of Kansas, at UMKC and Wichita State, at the region’s research hospitals like Children’s Mercy, Saint Luke’s, Research and KU’s medical and cancer centers, and one begins to see the formidable clout exercised by research activities.
The amazing thing is, we may just be scratching the surface of what a more research-based economy can mean to this region. We’ve already demonstrated an ability to exceed expectations, said Tom Thornton, chief executive with the Olathe-based Kansas Bioscience Authority.
“I think the region has done extremely well for itself,” Thornton said. “We’ve gone from ‘Can we pull this off?’ to achieving substantially bigger goals than I think any one of us might have envisioned. And with the commercialization and expansions in the region and some of the bigger opportunities in venture sites, I think we’re doing quite well.”
Kansas, he pointed out, had recently been ranked as the ninth-most vibrant biotechnology environment in the nation: “Who would have thought that ranking was possible four or five years ago?” he said.
And while he said that Missouri could benefit from a peer organization with funding authority similar to KBA’s, the true long-term needs for the region boil down to three things: Follow-through, capital investment—and patience.
“Biotechnology takes a long time,” he said. “Capital is a big deal, too. Especially for the early-stage companies, that remains a huge constraint. Without those venture funds, they’ll just go somewhere else to start their business.”
All that said, what follows here is a compilation—by no means comprehensive—of the kinds of innovative projects that are taking place in the Missouri–Kansas region. Some involve human health, some focus on animal health, still others are advances in process and production. All, though, incorporate innovative approaches to problem solving, and point the way to where we hope to go as a region.
CHILDREN’S MERCY HOSPITAL
Child-Size Drug Doses
Working with five other hospitals in the United States, Children’s Mercy is part of a venture called the Institute for Pediatric Innovation. This research wing is working to reformulate drugs prescribed for adult use, tailoring them specifically to toddlers and young patients. This is an important area of emerging research, because too many kids receive “child-sized” doses of adult meds that haven’t been through clinical trials to determine whether there are any consequences—and particularly, fatal ones—to simply downsizing the volume of a dosage.
The first two products from the institute are about to go to the Food and Drug Administration for approval. Once those products are brought to market, the participating hospitals will share the revenues, helping drive additional research efforts. The work is funded in part by grants from the Kauffman Foundation, the University of Kansas, the Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute and the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation.
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
Cancer Treatment
Rakesh Srivastava, a researcher with national credentials, left the University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler for the KU Cancer Center, where he is studying the molecular mechanisms of cancer cell growth and death to develop novel drugs to treat and prevent cancers.
But as much as that work may mean for individual patients, the Kansas City region itself has a stake in Srivastava’s success: He brings with him National Cancer Institute funding, which is a key element of the Cancer Center’s pursuit of National Cancer Institute designation later next year. Attaining that higher-profile ranking as a national-research facility status has been a key component of the Time to Get It Right initiative, the visionary plan for transforming the regional economy to include more bio-technology and life-sciences research.
Pet Sterilization
The face of veterinary medicine in the nation could be transformed if researchers at KU Medical Center succeed in their quest to develop a sterilizing agent taken in a single dose, applying to both male and female cats and dogs. That’s the focus of a research project under the direction of Joseph Tash, a professor in the department of molecular and integrative physiology, and Katherine Roby, in the department of anatomy and cell biology.
Their work could go a long way toward revising what veterinarians do—neutering is by far their most frequent procedure—as well as reducing the expenses that cities and humane shelters have to do with rounding up and disposing of as many as 9 million unwanted stray cats and dogs every year. The sterilant, dubbed KU-AS-272, is a single-dose anti-spermatogenic agent that has already
been proven effective in male mice, rats, rabbits, and non-human primates. Additional studies on female mice have demonstrated a disruption in egg development.
The project also would draw a distinct link between the life and animal sciences, the twin pillars of this region’s quest for a stronger biotechnology sector.
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI
Personalized Donor Organs
Organ rejection is the biggest reason for transplantation failures. The human body, we have learned, just doesn’t accept the notion that even a close genetic match is as good as the real thing.
So what if we could make the real thing? That’s the focus of work overseen by Gabor Forgacs, a professor of theoretical physics at MU. His work in tissue replacement technologies has already led to a spinoff company, based in California, that hopes to develop tissues on demand for medical transplantation. And they’re not merely acceptable matches for the recipient, either—they would be made from each patient’s own cells.
The process is essentially the same as you’d find in an inkjet printer, but instead uses cells to “print” replacement arteries, for example, one layer at a time. Those cells, grown directly from each patient’s tissues, eliminate the risk of organ donation rejection. Successful development would revolutionize the transplantation industry around the world.
“Every scientist,” says Forgacs, with a penchant for understatement, “has a dream that his or her basic research will be useful someday.”
(...continued)