Welcome to the biweekly electronic newsletter from the Bio-X Program at Stanford University 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 Bio-X or Stanford.

Seed Grant Program

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.

** THE LIST OF 23 NEW AWARDEES FOR OUR 6TH ROUND OF SEED GRANTS ARE NOW LISTED ON THE BIO-X WEBSITE. 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.

** On Monday, August 27, 2012, Bio-X held one of its 2 annual IIP Seed Grant symposiums at the Clark Center Auditorium, which showcases some of the awarded seed grant projects. The symposium was a success with 8 podium presentations, 154 poster presentations, and over 200 attendants. The recorded talks will be posted online soon. To view the previously recorded talks, please go 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

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.

** On Thursday June 21, 2012, our 18 newest Bio-X Fellowship awardees were announced at the BIO-X FELLOWS SYMPOSIUM. The symposium also consisted of four 15-minute presentations and thirty-five 1-minute research introductions that truly demonstrated the synergy of different yet distinctive disciplines, merged together to address various life bioscience questions. To date, we now have a total of 126 Bio-X Fellows. To view the numerous projects that have been awarded over the years, please click here.

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

News

Precisely targeted electrical brain stimulation alters perception of faces, scientists find
Bio-X NeuroVentures Program Funded Project, with Bio-X Affiliated Faculty Josef Parvizi and Kalanit Grill-Spector

In a painless clinical procedure performed on a patient with electrodes temporarily implanted in his brain, Stanford University doctors pinpointed two nerve clusters that are critical for face perception. The findings could have practical value in treating people with prosopagnosia — the inability to distinguish one face from another — as well in gaining an understanding of why some of us are so much better than others at recognizing and remembering faces. In a study published Oct. 24 in the Journal of Neuroscience, the scientists showed that mild electrical stimulation of two nerve clusters spaced a half-inch apart in a brain structure called the fusiform gyrus caused the subject’s perception of faces to instantly become distorted while leaving his perception of other body parts and inanimate objects unchanged. The surprised reaction of the subject, Ron Blackwell of Santa Clara, Calif., is captured in a video made during the procedure. “You just turned into somebody else. Your face metamorphosed,” he tells the researcher in the video. The video is publicly available and can be accessed at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ertqru7vminq9el/6kWSKn3X5o#f:Video-LowRes.m4v. ... “We can learn a lot about the function of different brain regions by studying these disorders and relating them to the anatomical sites where brain damage has occurred,” she [Grill-Spector] said. “But the injuries vary a great deal from one affected person to the next, and they are typically not confined to the fusiform gyrus. This limits our ability to localize a particular deficit to a particular brain site.”

About face: Study shows long-ignored segments of DNA play role in coordinating early stages of face development
Bio-X Affiliated Faculty Joanna Wysocka

The human face is a fantastically intricate thing. The billions of people on the planet have faces that are individually recognizable because each has subtle differences in its folds and curves. How is the face put together during development so that, out of billions of people, no two faces are exactly the same? School of Medicine researcher Joanna Wysocka, PhD, and her colleagues have discovered key genetic elements that guide the earliest stages of the process. Their research, published in the Sept. 13 issue of Cell Stem Cell, provides a resource for others studying facial development and could give insights to the cause of some facial birth defects. Because there is not enough genetic information in the body to define exactly where each cell will go, development of the face proceeds much like origami: genes provide instructions for folding, crimping, and movement of cells. As with origami, following a sequence of simple instructions can result in a complex, intricate object. ... What they discovered is that the modification of a collection of DNA sequences called "enhancers" can dial up or down the activity of the genes governing which cells eventually become the face. It's almost as if they have discovered how the instructions for a piece of origami can be modified — slightly change how a fold is made and you may end up with something very different looking.

Researchers develop efficient, protein-based method for creating iPS cells
Bio-X Affiliated Faculty John Cooke

Coaxing a humble skin cell to become a jack-of-all-trades pluripotent stem cell is feat so remarkable it was honored earlier this month with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Stem cell pioneer Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD, showed that using a virus to add just four genes to the skin cell allowed it to become pluripotent, or able to achieve many different developmental fates. But researchers and clinicians have been cautious about promoting potential therapeutic uses for these cells because the insertion of the genes could render the cells cancerous. Now researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have devised an efficient and safer way to make these induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, by using just the proteins that the genes encode. It’s not the first time such an approach has been tried. Many researchers have shown that using proteins to make a cell pluripotent, although possible, is far less efficient than the virus-based method. The unprecedented success of the Stanford researchers, however, was due to an unexpected discovery: The virus used in the original method is critical for more than just gene delivery. “It had been thought that the virus served simply as a Trojan horse to deliver the genes into the cell,” said John Cooke, MD, PhD, professor of medicine and associate director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute. “Now we know that the virus causes the cell to loosen its chromatin and make the DNA available for the changes necessary for it to revert to the pluripotent state.” Cooke is the senior author of the research, published in the Oct. 26 issue of Cell. Postdoctoral scholars Jieun Lee, PhD, and Nazish Sayed, MD, PhD, are co-first authors of the study.

Yeast model offers clues to possible drug targets for Lou Gehrig's disease, Stanford/Gladstone study shows
Bio-X Affiliated Faculty Aaron Gitler

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a devastatingly cruel neurodegenerative disorder that robs sufferers of the ability to move, speak and, finally, breathe. Now researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and San Francisco’s Gladstone Institutes have used baker’s yeast — a tiny, one-celled organism — to identify a chink in the armor of the currently incurable disease that may eventually lead to new therapies for human patients. “Even though yeast and humans are separated by a billion years of evolution, we were able to use the power of yeast genetics to identify an unexpected potential drug target for ALS,” said Aaron Gitler, PhD, an associate professor of genetics at Stanford. “Many neurodegenerative disorders such as ALS, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s exhibit protein clumping or misfolding within the neurons that is thought to either cause or contribute to the conditions. We are trying to figure out why these proteins aggregate in neurons in the brain and spinal cord, and what happens when they do." In 2008, Gitler received a New Innovator award from the National Institutes of Health to use yeast as a model for understanding human neurodegenerative diseases and as a way to identify new targets for drug development. Gitler is the co-senior author of the research, published online Oct. 28 in Nature Genetics. Robert Farese, Jr., MD, a senior investigator at the Gladstone Institutes, is the other co-senior author. Stanford graduate student Maria Armakola shares co-first authorship with Matthew Higgins, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar at Gladstone.

Mechanism found for destruction of key allergy-inducing complexes, researchers say
Bio-X Affiliated Faculty Ted Jardetzky

Researchers have learned how a man-made molecule destroys complexes that induce allergic responses — a discovery that could lead to the development of highly potent, rapidly acting interventions for a host of acute allergic reactions. The study, published online Oct. 28 in Nature, was led by scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of Bern, Switzerland. The new inhibitor disarms IgE antibodies, pivotal players in acute allergies, by detaching the antibody from its partner in crime, a molecule called FcR. (Other mechanisms lead to slower-developing allergic reactions.) “It would be an incredible intervention if you could rapidly disconnect IgE antibodies in the midst of an acute allergic response,” said Ted Jardetzky, PhD, professor of structural biology and senior investigator for the study. It turns out the inhibitor used by the team does just that. A myriad of allergens, ranging from ragweed pollen to bee venom to peanuts, can set off IgE antibodies, resulting in allergic reactions within seconds. The new inhibitor destroys the complex that tethers IgE to the cells responsible for the reaction, called mast cells. Severing this connection would be the holy grail of IgE-targeted allergy treatment.

Events

Resources

To learn more about Bio-X or Stanford University, please contact Dr. Hanwei Li, the Corporate Forum Liaison of Bio-X, 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.