Wisconsin Advanced Technology Advocates, Inc.

Legislation to fund biotech firms introduced

Bill would invest bioscience payroll taxes in growth

By Kathleen Gallagher and Mark Johnson of the Journal Sentinel

With a venture capital plan still being debated, two Republican legislators have introduced a bill that would use payroll taxes from biosciences firms to fund Wisconsin companies in industries ranging from drug development to soybean processing.

The Next Generation Jobs Reserve bill would divert payroll tax revenue from jobs added by bioscience companies into a fund that would provide grants, loans and direct investments to selected companies in the industry.

"If this bill does what we think it will do, you'll have legislators champing at the bit to do it for information technology, 3-D printing - whatever the next industry cluster is in Wisconsin," said Scott Kelly, chief of staff for Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine), one of the bill's sponsors.

The Assembly sponsor is Rep. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green). Reps. Louis Molepske Jr. (D-Stevens Point) and Dale Kooyenga (R-Brookfield) also signed onto the bill.

If the measure had been passed a year ago, the fund would be receiving its first injection of cash, about $15 million, based on the state's bioscience job growth of about 3%, said Bryan Renk, executive director of BioForward, the trade organization for Wisconsin's bioscience industry. BioForward worked with legislators to develop the bill and will support it, Renk said. Money for the bioscience fund would be capped at $50 million a year, or $500 million in total.

Full story.

 

Middleton biotech Lucigen receives research grants

By Kathleen Gallagher of the Journal Sentinel

Lucigen Corp., a Middleton biotech firm, said Monday it has been awarded $350,000 in grants from the National Institutes of Health to fund additional research and development.

The two grants will be used to develop genetic sequencing tools, and to create an affordable tool to help researchers study data from genes and proteins within individual cells.

Full story.

Medical College of Wisconsin researchers show molecule inhibits metastasis

Researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin have shown that a protein can inhibit metastasis of colon and melanoma cancers. The findings are published in the October 10, 2011 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Michael B. Dwinell, Ph.D., director of the Bobbie Nick Voss Laboratory and associate professor of microbiology and molecular genetics, is the lead author on the paper.

Chemokines and chemokine receptors are extensively involved in metastasis of 23 different forms of cancer. The chemokine referred to as CXCL12 is naturally expressed in the bone marrow, lungs and liver, all organs where cancer commonly metastasizes, but is often repressed in colon, breast and lung cancers.

In previous studies, researchers from the Dwinell laboratory had shown CXCL12 to reduce tumor growth and metastasis in colon and breast cancers. In those experiments, CXCL12 was engineered to produce the protein. However, for this study, researchers administered wild-type CXCL12 (naturally occurring CXCL12) or different oligomeric structures, either "monomer" (single) CXCL12 or a "dimer," a paired CXCL12 protein molecule and compared the results for both tumor growth and metastatic suppression.

CXCL12 proteins effectively blocked metastasis of the colon cancer and dramatically improved survival time, with the dimer showing effectiveness in blocking melanoma metastasis as well. Together with their prior results, the laboratory has shown that repression of native CXCL12 expression is a key signature in colon cancer whose impact on tumor malignancy can be reversed by administering the chemokine proteins. They also demonstrated that the single or paired proteins blocked metastasis while initiating unique biochemical signals through the receptor CXCR4.

"These data establish CXCL12 as a potential avenue for the next generation of biologic therapies that specifically target metastasis, which is key in cancer treatment and the improvement of survival rates" said Dr. Dwinell.

Six companies to be showcased at biotech conference

By Kathleen Gallagher of the Journal Sentinel

Six companies named by the state bioscience trade organization as emerging companies in that industry are exhibiting Thursday at the group's annual conference.

BioForward chose the companies to show their products at its Biotechnology Vision Summit 2011, which is being held at the Madison Marriott West hotel. About 500 people are expected to attend, said Bryan Renk, the group's executive director.

Full story.

Stratatech awarded $3.5 million to develop skin substitute

By Kathleen Gallagher of the Journal Sentinel

Nov. 16, 2010

Stratatech Corp. said Tuesday it has received a $3.5 million federal innovation grant to expand development of its anti-infective living human skin substitute.

The privately held Madison company received the fast-track Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Stratatech was one of just a few companies that received awards to develop therapies and diagnostic tools for drug-resistant bacteria with selected partners.

The company will partner with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Waisman Clinical Biomanufacturing Facility.

Full story

More than just a pretty flower

MIT chemists engineer the periwinkle plant to produce compounds that could become more-effective cancer drugs.

Anne Trafton, MIT News Office

November 4, 2010

Humans have long taken advantage of the huge variety of medicinal compounds produced by plants. Now MIT chemists have found a new way to expand plants’ pharmaceutical repertoire by genetically engineering them to produce unnatural variants of their usual products. 

The researchers, led by Associate Professor Sarah O’Connor, have added bacterial genes to the periwinkle plant, enabling it to attach halogens such as chlorine or bromine to a class of compounds called alkaloids that the plant normally produces. Many alkaloids have pharmaceutical properties, and halogens, which are often added to antibiotics and other drugs, can make medicines more effective or last longer in the body. 

The team’s primary target, an alkaloid called vinblastine, is commonly used to treat cancers such as Hodgkin’s lymphoma. O’Connor sees vinblastine and other drugs made by plants as scaffolds that she can modify in a variety of ways to enhance their effectiveness. 

“We’re trying to use plant biosynthetic mechanisms to easily make a whole range of different iterations of natural products,” she said. “If you tweak the structure of natural products, very often you get different or improved biological and pharmacological activity.”

O’Connor, graduate student Weerawat Runguphan and former postdoctoral associate Xudong Qu describe their engineered periwinkle plants in the Nov. 3 online edition of Nature. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Cancer Society.

Full story.

49 state biotech companies awarded $13 million in federal grants

By Kathleen Gallagher of the Journal Sentinel

Forty-nine Wisconsin companies were awarded more than $13 million in grants from the Internal Revenue Service as part of a federal program to spur small-company job growth and advance this country's life sciences competitiveness.

Full story.

Middleton biotech Lucigen receives R&D funds

By Kathleen Gallagher of the Journal Sentinel

Oct. 6, 2010 10:50 a.m.

Lucigen Corp. has received $301,272 in federal innovation grants to fund further research and development.

The Middleton company develops life science research products and technologies for gene cloning, genomics, and protein expression.

Full story.

Report: Wisconsin's bioscience sector is small but growing

By Kathleen Gallagher of the Journal Sentinel

Sept. 29, 2010 8:00 a.m.

While the rest of the state's economy was shrinking by more than 3%, Wisconsin's bioscience sector grew by nearly 3%.

It's a small sector that employs just 1.1% of all the workers in the state, but it also provides much higher-than-average earnings.

Those findings for the six years that ended in December 2009 will be released Wednesday at a networking event in Madison organized by BioForward, a trade group for Wisconsin's biotech industry.

Combined with data from the 2009 Battelle Report on Biosciences Education, which ranks Wisconsin among the eight best states for science and math education at the grade school and high school levels, the findings suggest an industry with substantial advantages that the state needs to act on, said Bryan Renk, BioForward's executive director.

"If you combine the job growth, the demographics on average salary, and the data on education, this is where we're going to combat the brain drain issue," Renk said.

Full story.

Cloned beef causing uproar in Britain traced to Wisconsin cow

Oxford dairy farmer harvested DNA from champion Holstein in 2000

By Karen Herzog of the Journal Sentinel Aug. 14, 2010

Mark Rueth's Holstein cow Paradise had just been crowned supreme champion of the World Dairy Expo in Madison in 2000 when a biotechnology company salesman approached him ringside and offered a cut-rate deal to clone Paradise so she could "live forever," and make his farm more profitable.

The Oxford dairy farmer and cattle breeder agreed, and the salesman immediately pricked the prize cow's ear to harvest DNA.

The world of cloning hasn't exactly been paradise for Rueth in the decade since, and especially during the past two weeks. Recent headlines in the British press screamed that two male offspring of a Paradise clone were slaughtered for beef that entered the food chain. Milk from a daughter of a Paradise clone also was traced to the British food supply, setting off consumer fears about food safety.

"The English people get in an uproar about stuff," Rueth said last week, noting that a British reporter and photographer showed up unannounced at his farm. "It's not like you're manipulating or changing the DNA. Half of the DNA from the clone's offspring is from the father."

In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration doesn't regulate milk or meat from offspring of cloned animals, and doesn't require labeling. Two years after the agency concluded those food products were safe, they're in the American food supply.

However, the U.S. Department of Agriculture requests that the industry continue a voluntary moratorium on placing products from original clones in the food supply to allow trade partners in other countries to pursue their own regulations.

Full story.