Biotech spinoffs fuel New Haven economy

2007 was a banner year for startup companies based on discoveries in Yale labs.

“Restaurants. Good restaurants.” The surge in upscale eateries opening in New Haven, said Jon Soderstrom, Ph.D., managing director of the Office of Cooperative Research (OCR), is one way of gauging Yale’s efforts to build up the local biotechnology industry. When a decade ago Yale made its commitment to create new business ventures based on laboratory discoveries, city gourmets could point to fewer than a handful of top-flight restaurants. Today diners have more than a score to choose from, and Yale’s head of technology transfer thinks much of the credit belongs to biotech.

“Biotechnology has made a substantial difference in the economic climate of the city,” said Soderstrom. Investment in new and existing Yale ventures reached its highest level yet during the 2007 fiscal year that ended on June 30.

According to OCR’s year-end report, outside investors provided close to $70 million in fiscal 2007 to launch seven companies based on Yale discoveries. Bioscience companies already in the region secured around $400 million in new cash for operations. That’s on top of more than $1.5 billion in private biotechnology investment to date, a portion of it going to the 25 new companies established by the OCR.

Among the newly launched companies was BioRelix, which will develop antibiotics based on discoveries about bacterial RNA targets made in the laboratory of Ronald R. Breaker, Ph.D., the Henry Ford II Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry. The company received nearly $26 million from investors. Existing company Achillion Pharmaceuticals received $52 million from its initial public offering, part of which will fund development of an antiretroviral therapeutic based on work done by Yung-Chi “Tommy” Cheng, Ph.D., the Henry Bronson Professor of Pharmacology.

Achillion is one of numerous young companies based in 300 George Street, a former telephone company office building now converted to laboratory space. The building’s nine floors are nearly full, and private developers are planning to construct a new building nearby for biotechnology companies.

Venture capital firm CHL Medical Partners has already invested more than $25 million in eight Yale spinoff companies. CHL partner Jeff Collinson, a 1963 Yale College graduate, recalls that before OCR began its push few laboratory facilities existed for fledgling companies and his firm had to look outside the region for experienced executives and skilled labor. Now, he said, “biotechs have good laboratory facilities ready to move to New Haven and there’s a pretty good labor pool to recruit from, so it’s much easier to get a company started.”

Said Paul R. Pescatello, J.D., Ph.D., president and CEO of CURE, an organization supporting bioscience in Connecticut: “I travel to meetings around the world. My sense is that qualitatively Yale is regarded as highly as any academic medical center in the world” for developing biotechnology enterprises. But quantitatively the region lags, he said, behind Cambridge, South San Francisco, San Diego and other areas with more prominent biotechnology sectors. Those areas, he said, have “other engines” to generate new ventures, while New Haven relies almost solely on Yale.

Soderstrom agreed: “New Haven is an emerging phenomenon. We’re a work in progress. But 10 years ago it was hard to get venture capitalists to come to New Haven. Today they’re here all the time.” And new restaurants keep opening.

—Marc Wortman

Eyeing “broader impacts,” Yale bolsters efforts to bring science to local schools

High school students in New Haven and neighboring communities are reaping benefits from a federal effort to encourage them to study science and engineering. Because fewer college undergraduates and graduate students are pursuing careers in the sciences than in the past, national organizations are asking researchers to help recruit the next generation of scientists. According to Kathie L. Olsen, Ph.D., deputy director and chief operating officer at the National Science Foundation (NSF), the percentage of students remaining in science and engineering after obtaining a master’s degree dropped from 23 percent in 1995 to 15 percent in 2003.

The NSF believes that if science were brought into the classroom and presented by scientists in a compelling way, more students might choose careers in science. NASA and other major funding sources, including the National Institutes of Health, have followed the foundation’s lead. As a result, since 2002 the NSF has required scientists to include a community outreach plan or a “broader-impact” component in their grant applications.

Yale faculty, staff and students were already running science outreach programs that brought more than 10,000 New Haven young people into free Yale-sponsored programs each year. The NSF broader-impact requirement meant that hundreds more researchers would be getting involved in science outreach.

Claudia R. Merson, the public school partnerships director in Yale’s Office of New Haven and State Affairs, said reaction to the NSF initiative was immediate. “Suddenly, researchers were approaching us saying, ‘I want to do some outreach. What can I do?’ ” Yale responded by convening a science outreach advisory committee that recommended appointing a coordinator for community programs.

Joanna Price, Ph.D., whose degree is in molecular biology and biotechnology, took on the job earlier this year. Her goal is to support and expand the many science education programs being offered. She will help faculty members interested in science outreach identify potential partners within the university as well as in the community; facilitate information and resource-sharing among the university’s science outreach programs; and serve as a liaison to area schools. A new website, www.yale.edu/scienceoutreach, lists all of Yale’s science programs available for the public.

So far Price has helped with four grant applications and launched a number of initiatives, including a series of talks at Hill Regional Career High School. She’s also working on a $1 million project to enhance science education in public schools, a program undertaken as part of the university’s purchase of the Bayer facility in neighboring Orange and West Haven.

Price’s position is funded by the provost’s office, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the NIH and has the support of existing Yale science outreach programs and from the Yale University Peabody Museum of Natural History.

Now that Yale has a conduit between researchers and K-12 educators, Merson is confident that up-to-date information on a full range of science-related topics will reach and excite the scientists of tomorrow. “We have always had amazing people here doing world-class research,” she said. “Now we have an organized way to share that with the community.”

—Jennifer Kaylin

New building on Amistad Street: a place “where great science is done”

Taking a page from theoretical physics, scientists at the School of Medicine’s newest building will shorten the distance between two places—the bench and the bedside. “This is the future,” declared President Richard C. Levin at the October 5 ribbon cutting—a future shaped by interdisciplinary teams quickly translating basic science into clinical solutions.

The 120,000-square-foot building at 10 Amistad Street will house three programs—the Interdepartmental Program in Vascular Biology and Therapeutics, the Human and Translational Immunology Program and the Yale Stem Cell Center. These programs, each of which draws on faculty throughout the university, were identified as crucial to the medical school’s strategic plan, said Robert J. Alpern, M.D., dean and Ensign Professor of Medicine. A lack of lab space, for example, had limited growth in vascular biology. The stem cell center needed facilities after Haifan Lin, Ph.D., a leading researcher, was recruited to initiate the program with the help of a $7.8 million grant from the state of Connecticut. And, Alpern said, the new facilities will “capitalize on our incredible strength in immunology.”

The $88.6 million structure is the latest to be built under a $1 billion plan to expand science facilities at Yale. The dedication came just as the university acquired 550,000 square feet of laboratory space at the Bayer HealthCare Company’s former headquarters in West Haven.

With workstations for more than 250 scientists, the building on Amistad Street offers sophisticated microscopy and technology for cell sorting and is environmentally sustainable. Designed by Herbert S. Newman and Partners, a New Haven-based firm, with lab spaces planned by Ellenzwieg Associates of Cambridge, Mass., the building features lights that turn off automatically, rainwater collection and other green features.

The day began with a symposium on translational and regenerative medicine. Salvador Moncada, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc., director of the Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, University College London, spoke on the role of nitric oxide in regulating mitochondria and cell bioenergetics. Douglas A. Melton, Ph.D., co-director of Harvard University’s Stem Cell Institute, outlined his research into the growth and development of pancreatic cells in humans and other vertebrates. Marc Feldmann, F.Med.Sci., director of the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology at Imperial College, London, gave a talk with an intriguing title, “Anticytokine Therapy: An Approach to All Unmet Medical Needs.” Feldmann and his colleagues proved that anticytokine therapy, which targets the overproduction of hormone-like proteins that regulate the body’s immune response, is effective in treating rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases. “Every disease has its cytokine irregularities, and there should be therapeutic targets,” Feldmann said.

Feldmann’s vision of dramatically improved human health was endorsed by speaker after speaker, including Provost Andrew D. Hamilton, Ph.D. “This is going to be a place where great science is done,” he said.

—Colleen Shaddox

Yale scientist tapped to lead Wellesley College

H. Kim Bottomly, Ph.D., a renowned immunobiologist and a deputy provost at Yale, became the 13th president of Wellesley College in Massachusetts in 2007. As deputy provost, Bottomly led an initiative to add women and minorities to the Yale faculty. As a scientist she focused on factors that influence the initiation of immune responses. She has served as a member of the Immunobiology Study Section of the National Institutes of Health and was appointed to the Advisory Council of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Summer program brings high school students into Yale labs to do research

Four years ago Gil G. Mor, M.D., associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences, was thinking of ways to get local high school students interested not just in science but also in studying science at Yale.

“Kids in the area would never apply here,” he said. “They always think Yale is something belonging to a completely different world. And then there’s a decrease in the number of these young kids going into science and medicine.”

So Mor initiated the Discovery to Cure program, which brought six high school juniors into Yale research labs that summer. The same year, Mor also asked teachers at the participating high schools how many of their students planned on applying to Yale. The answer was zero. But last year four students in the program applied to Yale, and two are now attending. Other program graduates went on to study science and medicine at such schools as Harvard, Cornell and the University of Chicago. Some have returned to Yale for summer research as undergraduates. Last summer, the fourth year of the program, 20 students spent six weeks in Yale labs.

The new program joins other Yale initiatives to bring high school students into research labs. For several years students at New Haven’s Hill Regional Career High School have lived on campus in a summer program during which they participate in small-group problem-based learning. And the Anatomy Teaching Program has brought Career students to the anatomy lab for sessions led by medical students.

“We were a little afraid of bringing teenagers into the lab,” Mor said. “They might break things, damage things. But the opposite happened. They contributed to the lab. The work that they did was outstanding.”

Kaitlin Markoja from Cheshire High School studied the connection between the immune system and pregnancy in Mor’s lab. “People who are pregnant don’t respond to viruses in the same way as other people, and we’re trying to understand this,” she explained.

Markoja’s summer research cemented her plans to pursue a career in science or medicine. “It was such a hands-on experience,” she said.

Irene Visintin, a research associate who coordinates the program with Mor, said complete immersion is what makes this opportunity so remarkable. “We don’t want them in there washing dishes. That’s not the goal,” she said. Not only do the students contribute to research, but they also remind some of the more senior researchers why science is fun. “They ask a million and one questions and run around smiling,” Visintin said.

Kelsey Hogan, a budding neuroscientist from Mercy High School, a parochial school in Middletown, Conn., worked in the lab of Tamas L. Horvath, D.V.M., Ph.D., professor of comparative medicine, of neurobiology and of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences. She studied the effects of maternal obesity on mice offspring, spending most of her days dissecting brains to look for dye that indicated the activity of cells that control appetite.

This gory and repetitive work could turn some people away from science. But Kelsey loved it. “This was the best summer vacation I’ve ever had,” she said, grinning.

—Sarah C.P. Williams

et cetera

Stress and addictions

Yale researchers have received $23 million from the National Institutes of Health to study how stress fuels addictions. They hope to understand why some people stick their hand in a cookie jar, smoke a cigarette or gulp cocktails when they’re overworked, have family conflicts or can’t balance their responsibilities. These studies could lead to new ways to combat the cravings of addiction and improve control over excessive smoking, drinking and eating.

“Stress is the kind of topic that really begs for being studied in an interdisciplinary way, because it affects every organ system in some way or another,” said Rajita Sinha, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and leader of a research consortium that will include psychiatrists, neuroscientists, social psychologists and communications and policy experts.

They will analyze the ways in which events early in life shape a person’s ability to handle stress; use neuroimaging to illuminate changes in the brain under stress; and explore the effects of pharmacological agents on stress and on lapses in self-control over such addictive behaviors as smoking, drinking alcohol and overeating. The consortium will also organize population-based studies as well as genetic analyses of vulnerability to stress-related addictive behaviors.

—S.C.P.W.

YNHH among best in nation

Yale-New Haven Hospital has been included in the 2007 “America’s Best Hospitals” rankings published in July by U.S. News & World Report. The hospital was rated among the best in the nation in 10 of the 16 medical specialties evaluated: cancer; digestive disorders; ear, nose and throat; endocrinology; gynecology; heart and heart surgery; kidney disease; psychiatry; respiratory diseases; and urology.

“This recognition is a significant benchmark for Yale-New Haven Hospital as to where we are among the nation’s best health care providers,” said Peter N. Herbert, M.D. ’67, chief of staff. “We are proud to be included among the very best in so many specialty areas over such a long period of time.”

—John Curtis


			Originally published in Yale Medicine, Winter 2008. Copyright © 2008 Yale University School of Medicine. All rights reserved.