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.

Seed Grants

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 4 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 February 25, 2013, Stanford Bio-X held its latest annual IIP Seed Grant Symposium at the Clark Center. It was attended by over 150 people, and the symposium included 8 podium presentations and 116 poster presentations. The podium talks represented research from a wide array of fields (such as gene delivery to interactive gaming in biology to tele-robotic systems to stem cells to hedgehog signal transductions and more), with each project exemplifying the Stanford Bio-X mission of crossing boundaries to bring about interdisciplinary research and solutions in the field of life bioscience. The talks for this symposium are posted here. To view previously recorded talks, please go here.

SAVE THE DATE: the next Bio-X IIP Symposium will be taking place on August 26, 2013! Please see below under "EVENTS" for the oral presentation agenda.

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

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 26th, 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.

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, 176 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

Injecting iron supplement lets scientists track transplanted stem cells
Bio-X Affiliated Faculty Heike Daldrup-Link

A new, noninvasive technique for tracking stem cells after transplantation — developed by a cross-disciplinary team of radiologists, chemists, statisticians and materials scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine — could help surgeons determine whether a procedure to repair injured or worn-out knees is successful. The technique, described in a study published online July 12 in Radiology, relies on an imaging agent already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for an entirely different purpose: anemia treatment. Although this study used rodents, the approach is likely to be adapted for use in humans this fall as part of a clinical trial in which mesenchymal stem cells will be delivered to the site of patients' knee injuries. Mesenchymal stem cells are capable of differentiating into bone and cartilage, as well as muscle, fat and tendon, but not into the other cell types that populate the body. Every year, arthritis accounts for 44 million outpatient visits and 700,000 knee-replacement procedures. But the early repair of cartilage defects in young patients may prevent further deterioration of the joint and the need for knee replacement later in life, said the study's senior author, Heike Daldrup-Link, MD, PhD, an associate professor of radiology and clinician who splits her time between research and treating pediatric patients.

Protein bath helps stimulate old marrow to form bone, study finds
Bio-X Affiliated Faculty Jill Helms

Bone fractures in the elderly are notoriously slow and difficult to heal. Now, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified a simple way to increase the effectiveness of a surgical process called bone grafting that may significantly speed the growth of new, healthy bone in response to trauma. In studies involving mice and rabbits, the researchers found that a quick dip in a bath of a signaling protein called Wnt3a can rev up sluggish bone-forming cells in older animals that would normally be unable to heal a fracture. If the simple treatment is eventually found to be effective in humans, it may significantly improve the success of bone grafts, which are performed more than 500,000 times every year in the United States. "We're very focused on designing a treatment that could be easily employed by orthopaedic surgeons in the normal course of bone grafting," said professor of surgery Jill Helms, DDS, PhD. "We've shown that when we temporarily treat bone marrow from aged animals with Wnt before transplanting the cells into a fracture site, we see really robust bone formation." Helms is the senior author of the study, published July 17 in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery. Philipp Leucht, MD, a resident in orthopaedic surgery at Stanford, is the lead author.

Stanford scientists break record for thinnest light-absorber
Bio-X Affiliated Faculty Stacey Bent and Mark Brongersma

Stanford University scientists have created the thinnest, most efficient absorber of visible light on record. The nanoscale structure, thousands of times thinner than an ordinary sheet of paper, could reduce the cost and improve the efficiency of solar cells, according to the scientists. Their results are published in the current online edition of the journal Nano Letters. "Achieving complete absorption of visible light with a minimal amount of material is highly desirable for many applications, including solar energy conversion to fuel and electricity," said Stacey Bent, a professor of chemical engineering at Stanford and a member of the research team. "Our results show that it is possible for an extremely thin layer of material to absorb almost 100 percent of incident light of a specific wavelength." Thinner solar cells require less material and therefore cost less. The challenge for researchers is to reduce the thickness of the cell without compromising its ability to absorb and convert sunlight into clean energy. For the study, the Stanford team created thin wafers dotted with trillions of round particles of gold. Each gold nanodot was about 14 nanometers tall and 17 nanometers wide.

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.