Welcome to the biweekly electronic newsletter from Stanford Bio-X for members of the Bio-X Corporate Forum. Please contact us if you would like to be added or removed from this distribution list, or if you have any questions about Stanford Bio-X or Stanford University.

Highlights

** On October 9, 2013, Bio-X celebrated the 10th Anniversary of the James H. Clark Center, the hub of Bio-X. Check out target="_blank">CLARK CENTER @ 10X as well as the Bio-X Timeline over the last 15 years!!

** Check out the article by Stanford President John Hennessy in the Nov/Dec 2013 issue of the Stanford Magazine on Bio-X and the Clark Center, "A Cauldron of Innovation".
 

Seed Grants

** Bio-X just announced its 7th round of requests for Letters of Intent for the IIP Seed Grant Program!!

** Upcoming event: BIO-X POSTER SESSION - Time: March 3, 2014 from 3-5 pm - Location: Nexus Cafe, Clark Center

SEED GRANTS FOR SUCCESS - Stanford Bio-X Interdisciplinary Initiatives Program (IIP)

The Bio-X Interdisciplinary Initiatives Program represents a key Stanford Initiative to address challenges in human health. The IIP awards approximately $3 million every other year in the form of two-year grants averaging about $150,000 each. From its inception in 2000 through the fifth round in 2010, the program has provided critical early-stage funding to 114 different interdisciplinary projects, involving collaborations from over 300 faculty members, and creating over 450 teams from five different Stanford schools. From just the first 5 rounds, the IIP awards have resulted in a 10-fold-plus return on investment, as well as hundreds of publications, dozens of patents filed, and most importantly, the acceleration of scientific discovery and innovation.

In 2012, Stanford Bio-X selected 23 new seed grant projects as the winners of the 6th round. Please go here to view the list of awardees, along with the titles of their projects and the abstracts of the research. Competition was intense as the awardees were chosen from 118 Letters of Intent (LOIs). Selection criteria included innovation, high-reward, and interdisciplinary collaboration. (To view the 114 other IIP projects that have been funded from the first 5 rounds, please click here.) In addition, SANOFI has also funded 4 new Bio-X IIP Seed Grant projects from round 6!

On Monday, August 26, 2013, Bio-X had its second annual IIP Symposium of the year at the Clark Center, which highlights projects that exemplify the Stanford Bio-X mission of crossing boundaries to bring about interdisciplinary research and solutions in the field of life bioscience. The symposium was a huge success with over 300 people attending this event, which included 8 oral presentations and 136 poster presentations. Recorded talks from the symposium will be uploaded soon. If you'd like to view the talks for previous symposia through the years, please click here.

We are cultivating and are highly successful in building meaningful collaborations with numerous corporate colleagues. New collaborations through our seed grant projects are highly encouraged. To learn about how to get involved, please contact Dr. Hanwei Li or Dr. Heideh Fattaey.

Fellowships

** NEW: Bio-X is pleased to announce the 11th annual competition for Bio-X Graduate Student Fellowships.

BIO-X FELLOWSHIPS

Every year, graduate students and postdoctoral scholars of Bio-X affiliated faculty are highly encouraged to apply for the Bio-X Fellowships, which are awarded to research projects that are interdisciplinary and utilize the technologies of different fields to solve different biological questions. Students are encouraged to work collaboratively with professors of different departments, thus creating cross-disciplinary relationships among the different Stanford schools. Our fellows have conducted exciting research, resulting in publications in high-impact journals and have been offered excellent positions in industry and academia. To date, Stanford Bio-X has a total of 152 Fellows.

On June 26, 2013, Bio-X held its annual Bio-X Fellows Symposium, where there were four 15-minute oral presentations followed by one-minute spiels from current fellows. The 25 newest fellows selected this year were also announced, and about 100 attendees came to the symposium. Please click on the "Bio-X Fellows Symposium" link above for the agenda and titles of the talks, and on the icon of the brochure above for the updated and latest Bio-X Fellowships brochure.

To view the numerous projects that have been awarded over the years, please click here.

** NEW: Bio-X is pleased to announce its 9th call for applications for the Undergraduate Summer Research Program for the summer of 2014.

BIO-X UNDERGRADUATE SUMMER RESEARCH PROGRAM

The Bio-X Undergraduate Summer Research Program supports undergraduate research training through an award designed to support interdisciplinary undergraduate summer research projects. The program is an invaluable opportunity for students to conduct hands-on research, learn how to carry out experiments in the laboratory, and develop the skills to read and analyze scientific literature.

This program is eligible to Stanford students who want to work in the labs of Bio-X affiliated faculty. To date, 241 students have been awarded the opportunity to participate in the Bio-X Undergraduate Summer Research Program. This summer is Stanford Bio-X's 8th round of USRP.

Participating undergraduates are also required to present poster presentations on the research that they've conducted during the program. Please click here for title lists of past posters that our undergraduates have presented.

Many fruitful collaborations and relationships have been established with industry through fellowships. Please contact Dr. Hanwei Li or Dr. Heideh Fattaey if you'd like to learn more about how to get involved with these fellowship programs.

News

Technique developed by Stanford scientists could lead to new treatments for pain
Bio-X Affiliated Faculty Scott Delp and Karl Deisseroth
Bio-X IIP Seed Grant supported project
Bio-X NeuroVentures supported project
Bio-X Graduate Fellowship

The mice in Scott Delp's lab, unlike their human counterparts, can get pain relief from the glow of a yellow light. Right now these mice are helping scientists to study pain – how and why it occurs and why some people feel it so intensely without any obvious injury. But Delp, a professor of bioengineering and mechanical engineering, hopes one day the work he does with these mice could also help people who are in chronic, debilitating pain. "This is an entirely new approach to study a huge public health issue," Delp said. "It's a completely new tool that is now available to neuroscientists everywhere." He is the senior author of a research paper published Feb. 16 in Nature Biotechnology.

Clinical trial shows 'stress shield' device reduces appearance of revised scars
Bio-X Affiliated Faculty Michael Longaker and Surgery Faculty Geoffrey Gurtner

A small clinical trial of a device invented by researchers at the School of Medicine has shown that it can help reduce the size of existing scars when used after scar-revision surgery. The same device was previously shown to minimize the development of scars after surgery, but this is the first time it has been tested as part of a procedure for reducing old scars. "This is exciting because there are a lot of scars out there and a lot of people are bothered by them," said Michael Longaker, MD MBA, the Deane P. and Louise Mitchell Professor at the School of Medicine and a senior author of the study. The results of the study were published Jan. 28 in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

Researchers rejuvenate stem cell population from elderly mice, enabling muscle recovery
Bio-X Affiliated Faculty Helen Blau and Scott Delp

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have pinpointed why normal aging is accompanied by a diminished ability to regain strength and mobility after muscle injury: Over time, stem cells within muscle tissues dedicated to repairing damage become less able to generate new muscle fibers and struggle to self-renew. “In the past, it’s been thought that muscle stem cells themselves don’t change with age, and that any loss of function is primarily due to external factors in the cells’ environment,” said Helen Blau, PhD, the Donald and Delia B. Baxter Foundation Professor. “However, when we isolated stem cells from older mice, we found that they exhibit profound changes with age. In fact, two-thirds of the cells are dysfunctional when compared to those from younger mice, and the defect persists even when transplanted into young muscles.” Blau and her colleagues also identified for the first time a process by which the older muscle stem cell populations can be rejuvenated to function like younger cells. “Our findings identify a defect inherent to old muscle stem cells,” she said. “Most exciting is that we also discovered a way to overcome the defect. As a result, we have a new therapeutic target that could one day be used to help elderly human patients repair muscle damage.”

Stanford researchers discover how parts of the brain work together, or alone
Bio-X Affiliated Faculty Krishna Shenoy

Stanford researchers may have solved a riddle about the inner workings of the brain, which consists of billions of neurons, organized into many different regions, with each region primarily responsible for different tasks. The various regions of the brain often work independently, relying on the neurons inside that region to do their work. At other times, however, two regions must cooperate to accomplish the task at hand. The riddle is this: what mechanism allows two brain regions to communicate when they need to cooperate yet avoid interfering with one another when they must work alone? In a paper published today in Nature Neuroscience, a team led by Stanford electrical engineering professor Krishna Shenoy reveals a previously unknown process that helps two brain regions cooperate when joint action is required to perform a task. “This is among the first mechanisms reported in the literature for letting brain areas process information continuously but only communicate what they need to,” said Matthew T. Kaufman, who was a postdoctoral scholar in the Shenoy lab when he co-authored the paper. Kaufman initially designed his experiments to study how preparation helps the brain make fast and accurate movements – something that is central to the Shenoy lab’s efforts to build prosthetic devices controlled by the brain. But the Stanford researchers used a new approach to examine their data that yielded some findings that were broader than arm movements.

Technique allows for radiation-free detection of tumors, study finds
Bio-X Affiliated Faculty Heike Daldrup-Link

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford have developed a way to scan young cancer patients’ bodies for tumors without exposing them to radiation. The technique could reduce patients’ risk of developing secondary cancers later in life. The new method, described in a scientific paper published Feb. 18 in The Lancet Oncology, is a modification of magnetic resonance imaging that employs a novel contrast agent to find tumors. The MRI-based method is as effective as cancer-detection scans that use ionizing radiation — specifically, positron emission tomography-computed tomography — the researchers found. Although whole-body PET-CT technology provides essential information for detecting cancer, it has one big drawback: A single scan exposes the patient to as much radiation as 700 chest X-rays. This exposure is especially risky for children and teenagers, who are more vulnerable to radiation than adults because they are still growing. Children are also more likely to live long enough to develop a second cancer. “I’m excited about having an imaging test for cancer patients that requires zero radiation exposure,” said senior author Heike Daldrup-Link, MD, associate professor of radiology at Stanford and a diagnostic radiologist at the hospital. “That is a big deal.”

DNA of peanut-allergic kids changes with immune therapy, study finds
Pediatrics Faculty Kari Nadeau

Treating a peanut allergy with oral immunotherapy changes the DNA of the patient’s immune cells, according to a new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford. The DNA change could serve as the basis for a simple blood test to monitor the long-term effectiveness of the allergy therapy. Peanut allergy, like other food allergies, currently has no cure. Scientists are conducting clinical trials of doctor-supervised immunotherapy, in which peanut-allergic patients take increasing amounts of peanut powder to try to desensitize them to the peanut allergen. At the end of the trial, patients are usually asked to eat some peanuts every day for the rest of their lives. “At first, eating two peanut butter cups a day might seem fun, but it gets a little boring and a lot of people might stop,” said Kari Nadeau, MD, PhD, associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford and an immunologist at Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford. Until now, doctors could not test whether patients who had completed immunotherapy could safely stop eating daily doses of peanuts, she said. “Our new finding can help us try to determine whether, for the long term, someone’s allergy has truly been shut off so people can eat ad lib.” Nadeau is the senior author of a paper describing the new findings, published online Jan. 31 in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
 

Events

Resources

To learn more about Stanford Bio-X or Stanford University, please contact Dr. Hanwei Li, the Bio-X Corporate Forum Liaison, at 650-725-1523 or lhanwei1@stanford.edu, or Dr. Heideh Fattaey, the Executive Director of Bio-X Operations and Programs, at 650-799-1608 or hfattaey@stanford.edu.