The Life Sciences in New York State

Failure is about to become an option in China

I find it quite interesting that Chinese legislators are now beginning to recognize the inherent value in failure. I've had more than one scientist tell me that there is no such thing as "failure" in the scientific method. Every experiment, whether successful or not, is an opportunity to learn something new.


Chinese scientists given freedom to fail

Research, especially within the pharmaceutical industry, is as dependent on failure as it is on success. Far more potential drugs fail than succeed and for each one that is left by the wayside, lessons can be learned to improve the chances of another molecule making it to market.

However, there is currently a great deal of pressure on Chinese scientists to only report successes and the science and technology minister, Wan Gang, is said to have told lawmakers that this is hampering innovation by preventing researchers taking risks.

"It's difficult to make achievements in independent innovation if the scientific research departments and scientists don't tolerate failure," Bai Chunli, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), was quoted as saying.

There have also been several cases where scientists have falsified or stolen results - something academics blame on the highly pressurised research environment.

Massive gift for Cornell

A significant chunk of this will go to Ithaca. Great!!

Unprecedented $450 million gift

The largest portion of the gifts to Weill Cornell is $250 million from Joan and Sanford I. Weill, chairman of WCMC's Board of Overseers. Of that amount, $25 million will fund the Ithaca-based Joan and Sanford I. Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology and its interdisciplinary research collaborations between WCMC and Cornell in Ithaca. The Weills also are giving an additional $50 million to help fund the Life Sciences Technology Building, currently under construction on the Ithaca campus. In recognition of their generosity, the building will be named Weill Hall. Taken together, the $300 million from the Weills is the largest gift Cornell University has ever received.

NYBA opens office in Albany

Good. We need NYBA to have more of a local presence, in my view. An office in Albany will strengthen ties with both the local biotech community and state government. I'd like to see NYBA take it a step further and establish an office in the Western part of the state.

New York Biotechnology Association Opens Capital Area Office at University at Albany Center for Functional Genomics

New York Biotechnology Association Opens Capital Area Office

More data on virus-cancer link...

...from Cold Spring Harbor Labs.

How common viruses can turn cells cancerous

It is well known that certain viruses can trigger specific cancers. Human papillomavirus, for example, causes around 93 per cent of cancers of the cervix. Now Dominik Duelli and Yuri Lazebnik at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and colleagues have found evidence for how they might do it.

Buffalo U in the News

Antibody Extends Life Of Mice With Breast Cancer

A monoclonal antibody developed by researchers at the University at Buffalo has been shown to extend significantly the survival of mice with human breast-cancer tumors and to inhibit the cancer's spread to the lungs in the animals by more than 50 percent.

Biotech Conference at RPI

October 12th...very interesting agenda and set of speakers,

The Lally School of Management and Technology

Founding and growing a biotechnology venture is no more difficult than developing any other type of entrepreneurial high-technology venture. However, the challenges are different in the life sciences area.

How to be Silicon Valley

Interesting essay from Paul Graham. I don't agree with everything he says, but a good read.

How to Be Silicon Valley

What it takes is the right people. If you could get the right ten thousand people to move from Silicon Valley to Buffalo, Buffalo would become Silicon Valley.

TNFalpha blockade and cancer...more confusion...

For years, there has been speculation that TNF-alpha blockade, over time, can cause cancer, specifically, lymphoma. Centocor's Remicade has been front and center in this debate.

Now comes this study from the Mayo Clinic which tends to support this contention, but the study appears to be so full of holes that it's impossible to draw any definitive conclusions.

1. Why wasn't Enbrel included? Becuase it's not an antibody? True, but that's not a good enough reason. Is there not enough retrospective data? The author of this article does not say.

2. It's unclear which authors are getting paid by what companies. Is this study without bias? The Mayo Clinic is being asked to investigate the disclosures. I'm not sure.

Taking Humira or Remicade triples risk of getting cancer, study says

Enbrel was not included in the study because it differs at the molecular level, Matteson said. He said he is getting paid by Enbrel marketers Wyeth and Amgen to do an analysis on Enbrel. Matteson's ties to Centocor and his work on Enbrel were among several omissions and errors included in disclosure statements that accompanied the study in the journal. He said the omissions were an office mistake. But in an unusual move, journal editors posted a correction yesterday on its website disclosing that they have asked the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine to investigate.

Well, this answers my question...

I would think there might be some life science applications for this.

Collaboration to bring $100 million supercomputing center to RPI

Thanks to a $100 million partnership involving Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York state and IBM, the Troy, N.Y., college is soon to be home to the world's most powerful university-based supercomputing center.

Endowments moving into hedge funds in a big way

Harvard and Yale endowments perform well due to their hedge fund investments, and now every other endowment is jumping on board. 60-80% of an endowment invested in hedge funds?! Isn't that a bit much?

Investing: Big Risk on Campus

"In the endowment world, there is a follow-the-leader mentality,"