Four years after Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich and UI officials broke ground at a muddy site on Gregory Drive in Urbana, the Institute for Genomic Biology will officially open its $75 million, 186,000-square-foot facility in March. Some 250 researchers already work in the institute’s offices and laboratories. Harris Lewin, the institute’s director, expects the facility to be fully populated with up to 450 faculty and staff members in the next two years.
In the late 1990s, when the idea of an Institute for Genomic Biology was conceived, biotechnology and genomic research already were under way at dozens of laboratories in several colleges on the Urbana campus. At one end of the campus, researchers and students were exploring how nutrition affects gene expression in dogs and other animals. At the other end they were building and testing variants of human and animal proteins. Other teams were looking for antidotes to dangerous bacterial toxins. Still others were tracking how genes are activated each time a new memory is formed.
IGB combines these and many other research threads. Its mission is to advance genomic science research at the university and to stimulate bio-economic development in the state. It will do this, in part, by bringing together the many genomic science and biotechnology-related ventures under way in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the College of Engineering.
Between its 2003 groundbreaking and today, the IGB has organized its diverse research pursuits into nine themes. The most recent theme to be announced, the Business, Economics and Law of Genomic Biology (BioBEL), is meant to support and further the work of the other research themes by focusing on the legal and commercial challenges and opportunities they present. BioBEL also will draw in two more colleges: law and business.
Each of the other themes relates to one of three program areas: systems biology, cellular and metabolic engineering, and genome technology.
The institute embraces an ambitious breadth of subject matter. One theme explores the genomic origins of life.Another assesses the ecological impact of climate change. Another will “mine” microbial genomes in an effort to find new antibiotic compounds. Researchers in the other themes will study host-microbe interactions, search for alternative energy sources or work to develop tissue-regenerating drugs and medical devices. Others will explore the genetic basis of behavior or biological complexity. Still others will investigate the rich diversity of life at the molecular level.
A Feb. 1 announcement that researchers affiliated with the institute will get part of a $500 million endowment from the energy company BP has given IGB an international profile. The money will launch an Energy Biosciences Institute for the study of biofuels and other “carbon-neutral” energy sources (that is, sources that do not add to atmospheric carbon levels). This is a joint project with the University of California at Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, with UC Berkeley taking the lead.
IGB also has received significant support from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Illinois Council on Food and Agricultural Research.
“The IGB’s mission of promoting economic development – I took that as a personal mission,” Lewin said.
Just one of the themes, Mining Microbial Genomes for Novel Antibiotics, “could change the whole financial picture of the university,” he said.
But the impetus to find commercial applications for innovations in the laboratory goes beyond simply picking the themes, Lewin said. The whole structure of the institute is designed to maximize the potential of that research. Scientists will not be able to work on individual projects at the IGB. Their research must be collaborative, involving investigators from at least two colleges. They must find significant funding for their programs, and they must demonstrate some level of success in five years, Lewin said, or they can be asked to leave.
IGB is different from similar institutes in that it adds research in ecology, biofuels and behavior to the standard biomedical mix, Lewin said. Including lawyers and economists also is unique.
“Nobody has business and law embedded in a life sciences building,” he said.
Because of this, Lewin said, he understands that researchers must be given the support to learn to work together in new ways and try new things.
“It’s completely new,” he said. “And it’s a work in progress.”
IGB launches new research theme: BioBEL
By Diana Yates, News 217-333-5802; diya@illinois.edu
How can biofuels become economically viable alternatives to petroleum products? What criteria determine whether someone can patent a newly engineered gene? What business strategies are most effective for protecting and gaining value from intellectual property rights? What is the nature of innovation in genomics and how might the industry evolve?
BioBEL, the newest research theme at the Institute for Genomic Biology, aims to tackle issues such as these, which can bring innovations out of the laboratory and into the marketplace. The mission of BioBEL (the Business, Economics and Law of Genomic Biology) is to foster education and research by analyzing the economic, legal and business elements necessary to bring genomic and biotechnology innovations to the commercial sector.
To accomplish this, theme leader and law professor Jay Kesan has brought together a diverse team of scientists, technology experts, business, law and agricultural economics faculty members and personnel from the Office of Technology and Management. (OTM identifies, evaluates, markets and licenses intellectual property on campus.)
Most team members specialize in more than one field related to the BioBEL theme. Kesan himself has a PhD in electrical and computer engineering in addition to his law degree. He also directs the College of Law program in intellectual property and technology law.
“The thing that unites us is a fascination with technology and entrepreneurship, the emergence of new products or new industries,” Kesan said. “And all of us are very multidisciplinary in our thinking.”
“While new industries emerge from introductions of breakthrough technology, their takeoff and growth are related to a sustained effort at continued innovation,” said business administration professor Rajshree Agarwal, a theme member who studies technology entrepreneurship and industry evolution. “In high technology environments such as genomic biology, navigating the business, legal and economic issues are as important for scientist-led firms as coming up with the innovation itself.”
BioBEL will pursue research directly related to its theme, Kesan said. Competition, markets, the role of innovation and the challenges posed by advances in genomic science and biotechnology are all fertile subjects for exploration and study.
Collaboration between scientists and social scientists will broaden the education of graduate students in the biological sciences by offering them the opportunity to explore business and legal issues associated with the biotechnology industry.
Kesan noted that it is difficult to measure all the social benefits of the technological breakthroughs such collaborations produce.
“But today there are multibillion dollar industries based on key innovations and key breakthroughs that occurred in universities,” he said.
Magnetic resonance imaging, first conceptualized by UI chemistry professor and Nobel Laureate Paul Lauterbur, is a good example of this, Agarwal said.
IGB Director Harris Lewin said BioBEL will help the UI fulfill its fourth mission: promote economic development. This mission enhances the other three – teaching, research and public service – and makes them more sustainable, he said. Lewin sees the new institute as a pyramid, with the real-world applications of these new collaborations at its peak.
“But the base of the pyramid is the discovery,” he said. “The base of the pyramid is knowledge.”