Quark Biotech Inc. has moved its company headquarters and some research activities--lock, stock and barrel--onto the Cleveland Clinic campus, and the two are pursuing a multiyear collaboration. While industry and academia have collaborated for years, companies usually locate their headquarters off campus. This stance may be changing. Company headquarters on campuses "is not very usual, but it's becoming more and more common," says Andrei Gudkov, the newly named head of the department of molecular biology at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation's Lerner Research Institute, and principal investigator for the first company-clinic research project. "I think it's very natural at this stage, where some of the information we have about diseases in the genomics era is so rich that the feeling is that it can be translated into practically applicable findings." Unlike a National Institutes of Health grant, Quark Biotech's grant to the clinic is designed to support research that can translate to drug and therapy development. According to Gudkov, clinic researchers are developing a functional genomics approach that combines microarray gene expression profiling with functional selection of genes that have an effect on cell growth, and they are working on a strategy for reducing the side effects of chemotherapy through the inhibition of p53, a protein encoded by a tumor-suppressor gene. Daniel Zurr, CEO of Quark Biotech, explains moving the company headquarters to the clinic campus as "a breakthrough in relations between industry and academia." Zurr adds that he expects the collaboration to jump-start a stream of therapeutic targets for products that will provide clinicians with what he terms more comprehensive ways to treat difficult diseases.
Forensic Clues to Microbiology Jobs
The nation's forensics laboratories seek scientists with advanced degrees in microbiology, according to James Kearney, laboratory director at the Illinois State Police Forensic Center in Chicago. Kearney, who himself holds an advanced degree in microbiology, made his comments at a session of the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in August in Chicago. Kearney said that his forensic laboratory looks for either someone who has a chemistry background as an undergraduate, with some emphasis in biochemistry or molecular biology, or a person who has graduated with an advanced degree in molecular biology. Those with molecular biology backgrounds have become more sought after with the advent of new techniques for combating crime, notably DNA testing, which can now be done on as little as "a speck of blood," as well as on degraded biologic materials, including bone as well as tissue or body fluids, he said. All 50 US states allow DNA testing as evidence, which translates to jobs for microbiologists and chemists throughout the country (www.the-scientist.com/yr2001/sep/hollon_p12_010903.html). Even more advanced technologies are coming along, says Kearney, such as the ability to look at mitochondrial DNA and use of lasers in fingerprint identification.
