Arizona Biosciences News

Arizona's educational programs in the STEM fields--science, technology, education, and mathematics--hold substantial responsibility for cultivating the state's future bioscience workforce. Among many dynamic STEM initiatives aimed at young people are several summer programs sited at universities and research institutions around the state. In this narrative, Laura Moedano, a first-year student at the University of Arizona, describes her participation in the KEYS Research Internships at UA.

Under a pact approved yesterday by the Arizona Board of Regents, the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix and Phoenix Children's Hospital will launch a robust collaboration that will include the establishment of a new academic department, joint research projects, and revenue exchanges to preserve federal funding for graduate medical education.

In the fierce competition for research funding, the Phoenix-based Banner Alzheimer's Institute has been doing quite well for itself over recent months. In a one-month span between May and June, it announced the receipt of $13.6 million in grants to support facility construction, equipment purchase, Alzheimer's prevention studies, and more.

A coalition built by the Tucson-based Critical Path Institute has opened access to an online database of records from some 4,000 participants in clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease treatments. C-Path hopes to give scientists at both large drug companies and tiny biotech startups a chance at turning a long record of frustration into the discovery of successful therapies for Alzheimer's.

Until a few months ago, the former Intel facility was a cavernous, empty building, emblematic of recent years' wrenching shifts in Chandler's manufacturing base. But as of April 30, a 40,000 square-foot section of the building represents something else: the city's aggressive pursuit of a dynamic segment of the bioscience industry. The Innovations Technology Incubator is open for business.

Under a proposal announced April 14 by Gov. Jan Brewer, the Arizona Department of Commerce, an important arrow in the state's economic-development quiver, would be overhauled and reborn as the Arizona Commerce Authority, a private-sector-led agency focused on business attraction and retention. Key industries on which it would concentrate include the biosciences.

A who's who of the nation's top universities couldn't accomplish it. But both Arizona State University and the University of Arizona did. Each university secured the maximum of four winners of the 2010 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, the most prestigious undergraduate award in the nation for student in mathematics, the natural sciences, and engineering who intend to pursue research careers. Five of the eight recipients are planning careers in the biosciences.

VisionGate, a Seattle company that has developed a highly accurate imaging device for diagnosing lung cancer, is moving its headquarters to the Phoenix Biomedical Campus. Under an agreement with the City of Phoenix, a variety of Arizona laboratory and clinical researchers will be granted access to company's advanced technology.

The wait is over. A year and a half ago, the Arizona Legislature authorized the Arizona Board of Regents to issue bonds for construction of the Health Sciences Education Building on the downtown Phoenix Biomedical Campus. On March 23, the Legislature's Joint Committee on Capital Review met and allowed the project to go forward.

As dismal as 2009 was for Arizona's economy, the state would have been in significantly worse shape without the strong performance of the health-care sector, the only segment of the economy to add jobs for the year. And as a recent study illustrates, health-care providers like Scottsdale’s Mayo Clinic have an outsized economic impact in the state.

Confronted with difficult economic times, for itself and the arts and culture organizations it was formed to support, the Metro Phoenix Partnership for Arts and Culture (MPAC) board of directors has voted to cease the nonprofit organization’s staffing and programmatic operations. MPAC will support the plan of its major funders to use remaining grants funds to directly assist arts and culture organizations.

A $15 million federal stimulus grant will create 250 jobs on the Phoenix Biomedical Campus, the University of Arizona has announced. The competitive grant, awarded by the National Institutes of Health to the UA College of Medicine-Phoenix in partnership with Arizona State University, will enable construction of a 22,000-square-foot laboratory support facility to serve researchers from multiple institutions on the Biomedical Campus.

At a trio of updates last week on Arizona's Bioscience Roadmap, experts in Phoenix, Flagstaff, and Tucson called attention to the exceptional growth that the biosciences have shown in terms of jobs, firms, and wages since 2002. But Arizona’s severe state budget deficit also led analysts to issue several warnings about the bio sector for 2010.

As the spring semester begins, Arizona State University is welcoming two significant additions in important segments of its bioscience enterprise: Denis Cortese, the former president and CEO of Mayo Clinic, and Lee Cheatham, previously the director of the Washington Technology Center.

Amid declining economic conditions in 2008 and 2009, Arizona’s bioscience industry continued its rapid growth in high-paying jobs and firms, and the state achieved notable gains in implementing its long-term plan to develop a thriving bioscience sector.