CU/Weill announces $160 million collaboration in bio research

From right, Cornell President Hunter Rawlings; Harold Varmus, president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; and Lisa Staiano-Coico, senior associate dean for research at Weill Cornell Medical College, talk to the media at Rockefeller University following the tri-institutional research program announcement June 27. Marie Wallace

Cornell and its Weill Medical College have joined two of New York's other leading research institutions in announcing the creation of a $160 million collaborative program in basic biological research sparked by a private donor who will contribute half the total investment. The program will involve several of the Ithaca campus' leading researchers in chemistry and chemical biology and in computational biology.

The collaboration among Cornell and Weill, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and The Rockefeller University will include the joint recruitment of a dozen new faculty members, reflecting the level of investment demanded by the technological demands of science today.

The joint venture was announced at a news conference Tuesday morning at Rockefeller by President Hunter Rawlings; Arnold J. Levine, president of Rockefeller; and Harold Varmus, president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering. Also speaking was Lisa Staiano-Coico, senior associate dean for research at Weill Cornell, representing Antonio M. Gotto, dean of the medical college, who was out of the country.

"This new and unique institutional collaboration of these outstanding research centers will allow us to take on the most exciting intellectual challenges of the 21st century: how to utilize the full knowledge of the human genome and how to apply new technologies in structural biology and nanotechnology to advance human health," Rawlings said. "Each of our institutions brings unique talents and resources to our partnership so we are a good fit. For example, the Cornell Theory Center in Ithaca, which houses our supercomputer, will play a significant role in this venture."

The three areas targeted for development are:

Chemical biology: Spearheading this research will be Cornell professors of chemistry and chemical biology Tadhg P. Begley, Richard A. Cerione, Jon C. Clardy, Steven E. Ealick and Bruce Ganem. A new generation of drugs will be precisely targeted to block or reverse disease processes at the molecular level. Development of these new therapies will depend on collaborations among chemists, cell biologists and biophysicists who study protein structure.

The Cornell Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, which will play a major role, is creating an interface between chemistry and chemical biology that is promoting both basic and translational research in modern biomedical science.

Computational biology: Leading this research will be Ron Elber, Cornell professor of computer science. High-throughput methods such as those employed by the Human Genome Project are producing massive quantities of data that remain in a disorganized state. Collaboration among computer scientists, mathematicians, physicists, engineers and biologists is needed to identify functional connections among genes and to work toward eventual applications in the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of human disease.

Elber's work in computational molecular biology (CMB) is bringing together researchers from physics, chemistry, biology and computational and mathematical sciences. The goal of the CMB team is to unravel biological complexity at the molecular level using the Theory Center's 128-processor cluster of high-performance servers.

Cancer biology: Under the cooperative venture, cell and developmental biologists will invent and apply new technologies to understand how healthy cells grow and differentiate and how the disruption of normal processes can lead to tumor formation. The participating institutions will expand their programs in cell and developmental biology, with an emphasis on developing and applying techniques for chemical intervention in cellular processes and real-time imaging of living cells.

Tri-institutional research program participants at Tuesday's announcement included, from left, Carl Nathan, chair of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell; Lisa Staiano-Coico, senior associate dean at Weill Cornell; Steven E. Ealick, Cornell professor of chemistry and chemical biology; Olaf Andersen, director of the tri-institutional M.D.-Ph.D. program and professor of physiology and biophysics at Weill Cornell; Harold Craighead, director of the Nanobiotechnology Center at Cornell; Bruce Ganem, Cornell professor of chemistry and chemical biology; President Hunter Rawlings; and Marvin Gershengorn, chief of molecular medicine at Weill Cornell. Marie Wallace

Also involved in the collaboration will be Harold Craighead, director of the Nano-biotechnology Center (NBTC), a national science and technology center at Cornell. The professor of applied and engineering physics is involved in collaborative projects on new molecular species for micro-fabrication and cell growth and in developing the use of microfabrication in biology.

More than 20 faculty members from each of the institutions played a role in developing the program. Some initial steps have already been taken, including a multi-institutional scientific seminar on chemical biology hosted by Rockefeller. A second seminar on computational biology will be held July 22 at Cornell's Ithaca campus. Joint recruitment is also under way for specialists in bioinformatics.

The joint faculty recruitments will occur over the next five to 10 years. These joint appointees will have full faculty privileges at each of the partner institutions. Visiting investigator programs and enhanced telecommunications links will facilitate collaborations among investigators based in Ithaca and Manhattan. In addition, plans are being developed for a shared graduate program.

The partner institutions will create core facilities for fundamental technologies such as high-performance computing, physical analysis of molecular structure, light and electron microscopy, DNA sequencing and other tools for genetic analysis and the broad range of chemical techniques that are applied to biology. One aspect of the partnership will be its group governance by the leaders of each institution. Laboratory space also will be shared.

The partner institutions have undertaken previous successful collaborations. In 1991, for example, they created a tri-institutional M.D.-Ph.D. program funded through the National Institutes of Health that is one of the most highly rated training programs in the country.