Friday, August 31, 2007
With millions in grants in hand and partnerships in place, researchers home in on cancer

By ANGELA GONZALES

Phoenix, AZ | The Business Journal of Phoenix

Arizona's fledgling biotech hub is bustling as more experts in cancer studies relocate here, along with their large research grants.

In 2002, research giant Battelle identified cancer as one of the state's three core competency areas (along with bioengineering and neurosciences) in "Arizona's Bioscience Roadmap." Last year, Battelle reconfirmed that cancer research is a broad competency here.

Saundra Johnson, executive vice president of The Flinn Foundation, which commissioned the Battelle report, said Arizona's strategy in the biosciences is to develop specific niches where the state already has world-class talent and assets.

"The importance of genomics to cancer research is profound," she said, pointing to the International Genomics Consortium as a leader in the national Cancer Genome Atlas Project, helping to put Arizona on the national cancer research map.

Johnson said she's seen an increase in the number of top scientists moving to Arizona, bringing their labs and federal grants with them.

"This is certainly the case in the area of cancer research," she said. "It's one of the reasons that Arizona is now outpacing the nation's leading states in growing its share of (National Institutes of Health) grants."

In its 2006 roadmap, Battelle showed a 30.5 percent increase in the flow of NIH grant money to Arizona from 2002 to 2005, far ahead of the 19.7 percent growth nationwide during the same period.

That represents a shift from prior years. Arizona's growth rate in NIH grants was 38.4 percent between 1997 and 2001, compared with the national average of 45.3 percent for that period.

Identifying strengths

Jeffrey Trent brought his International Genomics Consortium headquarters to Phoenix and was instrumental in the creation of the Translational Genomics Research Institute, or TGen. Now he is partnering with local universities and hospitals to move research findings quickly to the bedside. This way, researchers and clinicians are exchanging information to expedite treatments and therapies for patients.

"You have the hand-off between the bench and the bedside and the bedside and the bench in a real way," he said.

Michael Berens, director of cancer and cell research in the biology division and head of the brain tumor research lab at TGen, said he is amazed when he thinks of all the scientists who have been recruited to Arizona in the past few years.

"Three years ago, this was a dirt lot," he said from TGen's headquarters at the Phoenix Bioscience Campus, at Seventh and Van Buren streets. The nonprofit research institute now employs 300 people.

"In the half-decade that we've been assembling and walking the Battelle roadmap, the identification of inherent strengths in cancer were certainly respected," he said. "Because the roadmap identified strengths, we pegged the designation of making a difference in cancer."

Arizona State University and the University of Arizona also are ramping up their efforts in cancer research.

When ASU recruited Deirdre Meldrum to serve as director of the Center for Ecogenomics and dean of the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering, she brought with her an $18 million NIH grant.

Last August, she received a grant renewal of $18 million over five years to study how a cell works in the human body. She continues to collaborate with investigators in Seattle and at the University of Washington, where she came from.

Times changing

The University of Arizona, which has a long history of cancer research, has spun out several startup companies, including Cylene Pharmaceuticals.

Laurence Hurley and Daniel von Hoffe founded Cylene in Texas in 1998. They moved to Tucson in 1999 and 2000, but they moved the company's headquarters to San Diego because the biotech industry there gave it a better chance of survival.

"At that time, it was tough to start something in Tucson, quite honestly," Hurley said. "A lot has changed in the last seven years."

Still, he said, Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale is conducting some clinical trials on a Cylene drug to treat chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Hurley also spun out another company from UA, called SuperGen. Co-founder David Bearss operates that company in Salt Lake City because Mormon businessmen offered them startup money.

Now that a biotech hub is taking shape in Arizona, Hurley said his next company will be based in Tucson.

"We have a next generation of drugs that we are moving through to a point where, within the next year or so, we anticipate starting a company," he said.

He is glad to see Arizona biotech taking off, especially in the area of cancer research.

"In the state of Arizona in therapeutics, drug discovery and development, we have been more successful in that than in any of the other areas," he said.