ANN ARBOR—Seven University of Michigan projects have been awarded a total of $15.3 million in the latest round of grant funding from the Michigan Life Science Corridor (MLSC). The three-year grants are part of a statewide 20-year effort to advance life sciences research and the commercialization of cutting-edge healthcare products.

U-M researchers will be using the latest corridor grants to pursue projects such as helping the elderly retain their physical mobility and balance, looking for ways to regenerate damaged nerves, understanding the links between obesity and diabetes, and finding ways to make cancer treatment more specific and more effective. Corridor research grants to U-M in this round of funding total $8.9 million. “The state’s corridor funding continues to support research here at U-M that will lead to healthier lives for all Michigan citizens,” said Fawwaz Ulaby, U-M vice president for research. “Diabetes, cancer and the loss of mobility with aging are problems that many of us will face, but these grants from the tobacco settlement money are helping to find some answers.” A $3.1 million grant will establish the Proteomics Alliance for Cancer, to be headed by Gil Omenn, U-M’s executive vice president for medical affairs and professor of internal medicine, and Samir Hanash, professor of pediatrics and communicable diseases. The alliance will be advancing technology for rapidly analyzing proteins found in the blood plasma and biopsies of breast cancer and lung cancer patients. In particular, they hope to identify specific molecules that will help distinguish different sub-types of cancer. “Cancer isn’t just one disease,” Omenn explains. “There are many different kinds of cancer, and we’d like to identify the subgroups and find targets for directing treatments.” For example, the breast cancer drug Herceptin is only effective for patients who have over-expression of a particular kind of receptor in their cells. Advanced cancer drugs that have this kind of specificity will be more effective and better for patients, Omenn said, but the first need is to understand the different subtypes of the disease. Two Ann Arbor companies, Proteome Research Services and NovoDynamics, are also involved in the alliance, as is the Van Andel Institute in Grand Rapids. The U-M Institute of Gerontology will be using a $3.8 million grant from the corridor to study how and why exercise improves the strength and mobility of elderly people. As Americans continue to live longer, new ways need to be found to keep them fit and mobile, explained Gerontology Institute Director Bruce Carlson, a professor of Cell and Developmental Biology. “At any age, exercise will help you regain strength, but nobody knows exactly how it works.” A multidisciplinary team from several colleges and departments will study everything from individual muscle cells in human volunteers to their gait and balance. With help from a Dexter, Michigan firm called Bio-Logic Engineering, the researchers also hope to develop new tools for measuring muscle power. A project that brings together diabetes researchers at Wayne State, U-M and Michigan State was awarded $3.54 million. The Michigan Diabetes Research Consortium will pool resources and expertise to study the links between obesity and diabetes, a problem that has become a global epidemic. “We’re going to create a biological atlas of insulin resistance,” said Alan Saltiel, associate director of U-M’s Life Sciences Institute and a professor of Internal Medicine. He and several other members of the consortium had been co-workers at Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis in Ann Arbor. Using obese laboratory mice as a proxy for humans, the goal of the project is to understand why obesity creates a resistance to the body’s own insulin and leads to the disease of diabetes, which can cause blindness, kidney disease and nervous system disorders. Diabetes affects more than six percent of the American population and is a $98 billion healthcare problem. A group led by Daniel Goldman, a professor of Biological Chemistry and research scientist in the Mental Health Research Institute, received $1.02 million to produce genetically engineered zebra fish in which the nervous system glows green as it is developing. When an area of an adult fish’s nervous system is damaged, the glow resumes as nerve repair is performed. Learning which molecules are involved in nerve growth and nerve regeneration in the fish may lead to new therapies in humans with degenerative nerve diseases or spinal cord injuries. Other researchers at U-M and at Western Michigan University will be using the glowing fish to study the development of eyes, smell receptors, neural stem cells, blood, pancreas and movement. The diagnosis of kidney damage earlier in the course of diabetes and high blood pressure may be advanced by a project led by David Kurnit, a U-M professor of genetics and pediatrics. The project received $934,000 in corridor funding to improve technology for detecting the presence of a specific gene product in urine. An Ann Arbor company that spun out from U-M research, Velcura (formerly Osteomics), received a $3.3 million grant to further development of its patented technology for growing new bone tissue outside the body. U-M Professor of Pediatrics Michael Long heads the startup company, which is using adult stems cells to generate new bone. The Corridor also renewed its funding for the innovative Core Technology Alliance (CTA), a network of five specialized labs which provide sophisticated technology to researchers at universities and private-sector firms across the state. U-M is home to two of the five CTA labs, though each lab has “nodes” on other campuses as well. The U-M-based Michigan Center for Biological Information, which is applying information technology to biological research, received a $2.4 million grant in this round of funding. The U-M-based Michigan Proteome Consortium, which is analyzing protein structure and function in living cells, received a $3 million grant. In all, the state granted $14.7 million in additional funding for the Core Technology Alliance, continuing a $67 million, five-year commitment from the Michigan Life Sciences Corridor Fund to support the CTA. An additional $960,000 in corridor support is going toward a cooperative effort between technology transfer initiatives at U-M, Wayne State, MSU and the Van Andel Institute in Grand Rapids. The four institutions that form the Life Sciences Corridor are pooling resources to build a database of information for startup companies, and coordinate their policies and procedures for transferring technology. “The projects that were funded all have strong commercial potential,” Ulaby said. “The Life Sciences Corridor is an excellent investment in creating new businesses and new jobs in the state.” Significant awards were also given to several organizations that provide seed funding to life sciences startup companies. More than 22 new life sciences related companies were created in Michigan in 2001, with the injection of early seed funding playing an important role in many of these startups. The state of Michigan has committed $1 billion over 20 years from its tobacco settlement money to energize the life sciences industry. Michigan’s goal is to use these funds as a long-term investment in the health of the state’s citizens, and to be among the top five states in the nation in life sciences-related employment by 2010. The review of more than 100 funding proposals for this round of corridor grants was overseen by the Michigan Life Sciences Steering Committee and conducted by the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), publishers of Science magazine. In all, 18 projects will share about $45 million in funding from this round of grants. For more on the Life Sciences Initiative at the University of Michigan, please visit www.lifesciences.umich.edu For more information about the MEDC and the Michigan Life Sciences Corridor, please visit medc.michigan.org/lifescience/

Fawwaz UlabyNovoDynamicsInstitute of Gerontologygeneticswww.lifesciences.umich.edumedc.michigan.org/lifescience/