From the Labs
Houston, Texas
Volume 5, Issue 10
December 2006

Briefs

New partnership fights for AIDS-free generation

A new partnership between the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative and UNICEF will boost the care, treatment and support of children living with HIV around the world.

The collaboration is part of the global Unite for Children. Unite Against AIDS campaign for an AIDS-free generation. It will focus on prevention of mother-to-child transmission and pediatric HIV care and treatment. UNICEF and BIPAI, led by Dr. Mark Kline, professor of pediatrics at BCM and chief of retrovirology at Texas Children's Hospital, will work with national governments to expand pediatric HIV care and treatment initiatives to achieve four goals:

Grant to fund study of early prostate cancer progression

Three Baylor College of Medicine researchers have been awarded a $2.5 million grant to study early prostate cancer progression.

The multidisciplinary, five-year grant, titled "Co-Evolution of the Reactive Microenvironment in Prostate Cancer Progression," is part of the Tumor Microenvironment Network established earlier this year by the NIH National Cancer Institute.

David R. Rowley, Ph.D., professor of molecular and cellular biology, is the principal investigator and Gustavo Ayala, M.D., and Michael Ittmann, M.D., Ph.D., both professors of pathology, are co-investigators.

TMEN funds nine centers that address the role of the tumor microenvironment in cancer progression. The BCM team will focus specifically on the cooperative roles of reactive stroma and neurogenesis in the progression and will interact with the other centers to determine key mechanisms in multiple tumor systems.

Availability of bovine genome database could lead to better disease treatment

Researchers from the Bovine Genome Sequencing Project have released a comprehensive set of genome resources into freely available public databases. These new assets for bovine researchers include the most complete and accurate genome sequence to date, an upgraded genetic map and a new set of two million DNA base differences for use as DNA sequence polymorphisms.

The sequencing of the bovine genome was conducted at the Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center. The new genome sequence is 2.9 billion DNA base pairs—similar to the human and other mammalian genomes—and it incorporates about one-third more data than earlier versions.

Sequencing of the bovine genome began in December 2003 and is heading into the final analysis phase. The bovine genome sequence will aid agricultural researchers to improve health and disease management of cattle and enhance the nutritional value of beef and dairy products. Medical researchers will also use the bovine information to interpret the human genome, which will lead to better ways of treating and preventing disease.

Neuro-vascular regeneration project earns Inaugural Quantum Grant

A BCM project, "Neuro-Vascular Regeneration," that has the potential to profoundly improve the quality of life for stroke victims has been awarded the first Quantum Grant from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, which is part of the National Institutes of Health.

The goal of the international project is to engineer neuro-vascular regenerative units in vitro, which can then be implanted into the damaged cortex of stroke patients to provide a source of neural and vascular cells that will continue to develop and differentiate and lead to the repair of stroke-injured tissue.

BCM's Karen K. Hirschi, Ph.D., deputy director of the Center for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, is the grant's principal investigator. The associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology is also a member of the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy. She will collaborate with the co-principal investigator Dr. Robin Lovell-Badge, head of the Division of Developmental Genetics at the National Institute for Medical Research in London. Their multidisciplinary team includes doctors and scientists with complementary expertise in developmental neurobiology, stem cell biology, genetics, biomedical imaging, tissue engineering and clinical cellular therapies.

Dunn Foundation boosts drug delivery program

Funding from the John S. Dunn Foundation will jumpstart the work of scientists at Gulf Coast Consortia institutions—including Baylor College of Medicine—by providing the infrastructure, equipment, genomics libraries and seed grants to speed new drug discoveries.

The $2.7 million gift established a program dubbed the John S. Dunn Gulf Coast Consortium for Chemical Genomics. The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston will be the home of the hub laboratory for the drug discovery program, where state-of-the-art robotics, instrumentation and computer technology will be employed for rapid screening of chemical compounds to identify drugs that may act as molecular "targets" known to be associated with specific diseases.

In addition to the hub lab, the Dunn Foundation is also supporting "spokes," or satellite labs, which will use the money to purchase robotics and detection systems for compatible research projects at GCC partner campuses. The award also includes $500,000 in seed funding to support innovative, early-stage pilot projects, particularly from young investigators who are doing the cutting-edge groundwork needed for developing biomedical treatments that will reverse or prevent diseases.

Michael Mancini, Ph.D., associate professor in BCM's Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, will serve as co-director of GCC-CG. His group at BCM was the lead laboratory in pioneering high-throughput single cell gene transcription studies using novel microscopy-based technology.

The GCC includes BCM, UT-Houston, the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Rice University, the University of Houston and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.