Elaine Amir, Executive Director of the Johns Hopkins University Montgomery County Campus,
welcomed the attendees and introduced them to JHU/MCC, the Shady Grove Life Sciences
Center, and the vision embodied in these institutions.
JHU is the largest private employer in Maryland, with 18 campuses. The Montgomery County
region is a hotspot for applied life sciences, and JHU fosters inter-disciplinary and inter-sector
collaboration (federal-university-industry collaboration). Science initiatives at JHU include the
Innovate! Entrepreneurship Program, NIH National Children’s Study, Creation of a new 3D
Microscopy, CTSA program, and Applied Health Sciences Informatics program. Institutions based
on campus include Cato Research, Branchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute, National
Cancer Institute, Alere, TruBios, AirWay, TissueGene, Inc., Kymanox, HPI, Vanda, and Chiesi.
The community comes together in the Montgomery County campus of JHU. Apart from the
regular courses, there are many campus activities that stimulate growth of young minds and
create potential for innovation. Some of the ongoing projects are K-12 Outreach at JHU/MCC,
Frontiers in Science and Medicine, JHU for Talented Youth programs, Engineering Innovation,
Digital Forensics Institute, Youth Writing Workshops, and Brownie Troop Visits to JHU/MCC Wet
Lab.
The Great Seneca Science Corridor Master Plan currently features development of the I-270
corridor to take over as the economic engine for the county and the state. The Shady Grove Life
Sciences Center is already becoming the county’s premier location for and largest concentration
of biotech companies, known for a connected and collaborative community of people that
promote health for the whole world.
While preserving open spaces, the county is focusing on high-density development near the
existing infrastructure, including plans for a transit line to run through the heart of the area. This
development, of which JHU is an integral part, has already begun, and will provide more jobs, tax
revenues, a world-class life sciences industry, and a live-work-learn-play community.
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David McDonough, Senior Director of the Johns Hopkins University Montgomery County
Campus, elaborated on commercialization solutions – connecting institutions in the bio-health
industry from the origin of the idea to the delivery of the health product in the market. Sources of
bio-health discoveries include NIH, FDA, NIST, DOD Tech Transfer, JHU, and University of
Maryland. Biotech Incubators exist within the region, along with other US and global biotech
sources. Product management is the area where the weakness lies, not in academics or
technology. It is important to identify what is ready for the market, if the product is unique, and if
the financial aspect is adequate to attract investors.
Commercialization solutions include using the region’s resources; linkages to domestic and global
export markets; and attracting a network of senior biotech managers, entrepreneurs, and
executives. With two percent of the population and ninety-eight percent of the knowledge of the
world, it is imperative that the US shares this knowledge globally and equitably.
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The first panel, on data-intensive biomedical research, included George Komatsoulis, Deputy
Director of the NCI Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology, Vijay
Chandru, President of ABLE (Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises) as well as CEO of
Strand Life Sciences, Scott Brim, representative of Internet2, and Alex Szalay, Alumni
Centennial Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University.
Komatsoulis emphasized that biomedical technology is a supreme enabler of collaboration. With
cancer a global burden, and the number of cancer diagnoses in India catching up to the US, India
may be facing six million cancer diagnoses a year. In such an environment individual research for
disease solutions becomes meaningless. With interoperability, technology can be shared
effectively. caBig and the Indo-US Cancer Research Grid will assist in collaboration between
India and the US. caBIG’s core principles include open access, open development, open source,
and federation. The initial activities of the Grid will be to deploy interoperability at CDAC in Pune,
connect CDAC bioinformatics resources and applications facility to caGrid, and identify and
implement initial scientific use cases. There are already at least seven Indian institutions that are
participating in ongoing collaboration with NCI.
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Chandru spoke about today’s data intensive scientific discovery, which encourages rapid
discovery and registry of data but does not automatically lead to global sharing and cooperation.
He went on to elaborate on AVADIS, a rich development platform for the management, analysis,
and visualization of complex ideas and research, which is optimized for dealing with life science
specific problems.
As part of an agenda for Indo-US partnership, Chandru suggested the establishment of mirror
sites in India of data repositories, and adaptive trials that are now in the US with different and
larger patient cohorts in India. Such sharing of scientific data will hugely benefit the global
research community.
India represents an opportunity for a fresh approach in biomedical informatics because there is
no installed base, no legacy. With new health infrastructure under development, and the
opportunity to adopt new models of health payers/insurance public burden, etc., it is practically
virgin territory where the bench and the bedside can be brought together in the context of health
records, and even innovation.
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Szalay spoke about how scientific computing, which started with supercomputers, has ended up
with the exponential growth of data. One of the challenges to modern science is the management
of the colossal amount of incoming and newly discovered data. This is also true for the world of
commerce. Science has evolved from the empirical to the computational with the simulation of
complex phenomena. However, today science is driven by data, which are synthesizing theory,
experiment, and computations with statistics, requiring a new way of thinking. Science is moving
from hypothesis-driven to data-driven discoveries. Therefore it needs new data intensive scalable
architectures, new randomized, incremental algorithms, and new computational tools and
strategies. Disc space is a dire need and the scientific community does not have the funding or
the investment to create a server large enough to store and share data. The 100 TB is the current
practical limit in scientific data storage. Data collection in large collaborations may be the answer.
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Brim described Internet2 as an advanced networking consortium led by the U.S. research and
education community. Founded in 1996 by the presidents and CIOs of several major U.S.
Universities, it has over 250 higher education, industry, affiliate and research and education
networks. Together with its state and regional network partners, Internet2 reaches over 60,000
institutions across the U.S. and through its international connections. The emphasis is on
research collaboration and global connectivity as exemplified by the E. Coli genome project with
Europe.
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Before the second panel was convened, Dr. Raj Bahn, delegation leader and Secretary of the
Indian Department of Biotechnology, addressed the attendees and expressed his support of
international collaborations with the aim of developing India’s capacity. Although India has a good
base in science and technology, he said, to learn discovery, it was still necessary to partner with
the best and participate globally.
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The second panel opened with Nagi Kumar, senior member/professor in the Division of
Population Sciences at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in the University of
South Florida. Kumar emphasized the need for precompetitive collaboration, and affirmed the
significance of evaluating in silico drug design in the development of botanicals and biologics for
cancer treatment and prevention. Despite outstanding infrastructure and the large number of
botanicals and biologics identified, there are not enough research scientists and clinicians who
would translate the data into applications. There is also no established system of sharing this
information among researchers and clinicians.
A joint Indo-US effort should result in an infrastructure of trans-disciplinary core stakeholders; a
larger number of research scientists interested and committed to lower the cancer burden in India
and the US; research partnerships between cancer research scientists and clinicians in India and
the US; partnerships between Indian and US Cancer research organizations; identification of
funding; and efficient translation of the discoveries into standards of clinical practice that will
ultimately impact cancer morbidity and mortality. There is also an urgent need to find a more
productive way to develop drugs through cooperation among industry, academia, government,
and philanthropic organizations.
There are many opportunities for collaboration between India and the US, including establishing a
repository for botanicals and biologics, setting up team science consortia, and initiating
collaborative research projects.
View Nagi Kumar's presentation here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txTfTp_p09Q
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Sanjay Malhotra of the National Cancer Institute provided an overview of the integrated pipeline
of NCI called “NExT”, which was created to integrate education, research, and partnership - or
academia, government, and industry - to address the burden of diseases.
The NCI Experimental Therapeutics program was conceived as an interdisciplinary program to
interact between all fields of chemistry and biology that use caBIG for discovery, development,
and clinical investigation. It provides a single pipeline for all therapeutic development resources.
Targets include investigatory drugs, investigatory imaging agents, academic and small biotech
projects, NCI and NIH internal projects. The goal is unified discovery and development. Ideas can
come from anywhere and then be shared transparently.
The Chemical Biology Consortium that governs the program includes Burnham Institute,
Southern Research, SRI International, Vanderbilt, Emory, etc. It builds on over 50 years of NCI
experience in cancer drug development, and is not intended to replicate the pharmaceutical
industry. The Consortium agreement addresses data transfer, data sharing, data ownership, and
details timely entry of data, adequate access, joint management of inventions, and sharing of
research resources.
View Sanjay Malhotra's presentation here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3CIM8a3Lnw
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Ananda Chakrabarty, distinguished professor of the University of Illinois at Chicago, shared his
experiences in research and development of cancer fighting bacteria and its biochemical
derivative. Done at the university level, the strain of bacteria that was cultivated by Chakrabarty
and his colleagues attacked cancer cells and eliminate cancer growth through preferential
signaling. From this, it was discovered that the non-toxic P-28 protein could be synthesized,
which went through clinical testing and successfully reduce tumors in phase four cancer patients
when no other conventional drugs could. There could possibly be many other strains of bacteria
and proteins that exhibit similar anti-cancer activity.
View Ananda Chakrabarty's presentation here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-PxInl80Fk
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Ben Prickril, International Program Officer in the National Cancer Institute's Center for Global
Cancer Research, described the existing relationship between NCI cancer research and other
countries including India and the logistics involved in collaborations.
NIH is composed of several institutes and centers. Intramural versus extramural proposals may
be important to the paradigm for collaborative research. Not much funding may be available for
foreign countries. There are no restrictions, but it is a very competitive process. India already has
close to the largest number of international visitors at the NIH. Knowledge is key, but it must flow
in both directions for sustainable collaborations.
NCI excels at early drug development, clinical/translational research, both profit-driven and
orphan-drug technologies, bioinformatics applied to genomics, proteomics, etc. But ultimately
ideas are more important in establishing collaborations. A project works when someone is
passionate about the idea behind it.
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Dr. Collins Jones, coordinator of the biotechnology program at Montgomery College, gave a
quick visualization of the future of biotechnology. A key point emphasized was that more four year
and two year degrees are going to be conducting the research and joining the workforce. Jones
shared that Montgomery College’s world class biotechnology program has focus on industry
relevance, hands on experience, workplace behavior, and the needs of the students.
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Debapriya Dutta, Science and Technology Councilor in the Indian Embassy at Washington DC,
summarized the day’s activities for the Indian delegates that culminated in the JHU meeting. The
day's purpose was set towards learning about the alignment between academia, research, and
industry. NIH and Indian industry representatives met to look at existing infrastructure, and
collaboration will be strengthened with coinvestment and development.
View Debapriya Dutta's presentation here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj8ZgFLgS84
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Additional photographs from the conference are displayed below:
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