Working in a Virtual Laboratory

NEXT STEP: The virtual center "is the natural evolution of our shared research interests," says Ashley T. Haase, chair of the microbiology department at the University of Minnesota. When AIDS researchers physically located in four different states hold a meeting, it almost feels like they're sitting at a table across from each other--but they're really just facing their individual computer screens. They view slides of the human immunodeficiency virus in lymphoid tissue in real time and discuss what they see via virtual reality. Although the slides are in Madison, Wis., the investigators in the other states can manipulate the images, change the magnification, move the stage, or use an arrow to point things out. All the while, they talk to each other as though they are in the same room. Should one researcher wish to view another scientist's database, he can access it even if he doesn't have the application for opening the file on his own computer. The technologies of video and audio conferencing, the Internet, and application sharing make it all possible for the researchers in the Great Lakes Center for AIDS Research (CFAR), a new collaborative effort of four institutions in Madison, Wis., Evanston, Ill., Minneapolis, Minn., and Ann Arbor, Mich. "We can integrate our work and perform comprehensive analyses of complex immunologic research. We can transcend the ivory tower and work in a center without walls," says Steven M. Wolinsky, professor of medicine at Northwestern University Medical School and director of the Great Lakes CFAR. C. David Pauza Steven M. Wolinsky Gary J. Nabel Centers such as the Great Lakes CFAR foster good science by providing scientists who are pursuing similar goals an opportunity to further their research, according to Wolinsky. "We get more from the whole than from the individual parts," he says. At least, that's the goal for the Great Lakes CFAR, which is beginning to achieve it with the help of the various advanced technologies that enhance researchers' ability to communicate. The Great Lakes CFAR, the only one of the 17 CFARs to be set up as a virtual center, was funded with a $30 million grant last fall from the National Institutes of Health. The grant was awarded with the intent that the center would not only produce high-level AIDS research, but also serve as a model for a multisite operation. The Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work (CREW) was brought in to analyze the researchers' computer skills and needs, and install technology to enhance the researchers' communication options. A research center at the University of Michigan that has already been successful at helping scientists in other fields work together from scattered locations, CREW focuses on designing ways that technologies make possible new forms of working. CREW uses some commercially available software, such as Microsoft's NetMeeting, but most software is still being tested by developers, and some is being generated by CREW. The plan is to create a modular suite of software that can be easily updated when new modules become available (see box). CREW plans to track the results of their collaboration and how the researchers interact using various technologies, according to Stephanie Teasley, a CREW assistant research scientist who is directing the CFAR project. Because the four lead researchers in the center have nonoverlapping scientific expertise but the same goal of eradicating AIDS, Teasley expects that their collaboration will indeed result in new findings. "They have four different approaches to research. The center will help them to broaden their research and their understanding of how other findings in the field fit into their research," she says. Some of the software being used, or under consideration, by CREW includes: PlaceWare's Auditorium (placeware.com): A live, interactive, multimedia Web environment in which researchers can talk and hear each other. NetMeeting (microsoft.com/netmeeting): NetMeeting allows researchers to simultaneously view images and discuss them in real time. It also allows application sharing in real time; when one researcher is showing the group something from his computer, the others can access it and manipulate it on their own computers, even if they don't have that application installed. Docushare (www.xerox.com): Information management and sharing tool that lets team members use a corporate intranet or extranet to set up a virtual information-sharing environment. Users can post, retrieve, and search for information. WebBoard (webboard.com): This program supports online conferencing--live chat and multithreaded conferencing. Live networks for real time video (www.real.com) Each investigator brings special expertise. Wolinsky's research has focused on the pathogenesis and treatment of the AIDS virus, genotypic analysis, and techniques for detecting minute amounts of HIV DNA or RNA in a small number of blood cells. Ashley T. Haase, chair of the microbiology department at the University of Minnesota, has also studied pathogenesis and treatment for AIDS, focusing on quantitative single-cell methods to analyze the events that take place in the lymphoid tissues, the major site where HIV is produced and persists. Both have access to clinical trials at their institutions. C. David Pauza, professor of pathology and chair of the immunology and virology research group at Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center, has studied the simian immunodeficiency virus in rhesus monkeys for his work on the mechanisms of HIV transmission and pathogenesis. And Gary J. Nabel, professor of biological chemistry and internal medicine at the University of Michigan has studied the mechanisms by which cells regulate the expression of genes during development. His work has focused particularly on gene-transfer techniques. The four have worked together in the past, but it wasn't until the formation of the Great Lakes CFAR that their collaboration was formalized. "The center is the natural evolution of our shared research interests," Haase says. Although the center is in its early stages, Wolinsky, Haase, Pauza, and Nabel are already finding ways the communications technologies can be used to advance their research. Application-sharing software gives members of the Great Lakes CFAR access to research databases at the other institutions. In the past, this was difficult because the documents were created using applications unavailable in other places. Sharing databases allows the researchers to integrate others' data, and it saves individual researchers from replicating work already done. "A lot of data generated is from the same patient, so we can interconnect data files for better comprehensive analysis," Wolinsky explains. CREW created a server for the center for easier sharing of files and for securing patient confidentiality. Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work (CREW) University of Michigan 734-647-4948 E-mail: steasley@umich.edu Steve Wolinsky Great Lakes Center for AIDS Research (CFAR) Northwestern University 312-908-9819 The researchers also have enhanced ability to broaden their research. "I would have to hunt around at my own institution, where the resources may not even be available, or travel to another institution. Instead of doing that, I can log onto my computer and collaborate with the other researchers in the CFAR center," Haase says. For example, if he wants to measure a local immune response, he can only do it with nonhuman primates. So he would show his work to Pauza, who runs a nonhuman primate center, and together, using the new communications technology, they would analyze any information collected on local immune responses in Pauza's rhesus monkeys. So far, they have communicated just through the keyboard and telephone, but audio/video conferencing capabilities are being developed for them. And CFAR offers a conduit for making research opportunities such as clinical studies or nonhuman primate studies available. If Nabel wants to perform some initial gene therapy research on rhesus monkeys, for example, Pauza says that he would let Nabel know when a rhesus monkey was available. "We'll be making an effort to keep CFAR informed about opportunities for primate research here and the available research they can be a part of," Pauza says. He says that he will be proactive about keeping others in the Great Lakes Center updated. Making information like this available on a multisite server is an important step to enhancing speed and lowering costs, he says. Eventually, the center hopes to have developmental funds available to Great Lakes CFAR participants for doing initial research, Wolinsky says. Instead of having to write a proposal, send it in, and wait for months just to find out if the funding came through, the researchers could go to CFAR with a proposal, and literally within a few days, acquire funding. In the future, the multisite setup of the Great Lakes CFAR may serve as a model for other CFARs, Wolinsky says. The research collected by CREW on which technologies work best and on how the researchers work together, will, according to Janet Young, program officer for the AIDS division's basic science program at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, help the NIH decide if such centers are the future of scientific collaboration. Jennifer Fisher Wilson is a freelance science writer based in Philadelphia.

Working in a Virtual Laboratory

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