October 2, 2018

Open house to celebrate past, future of life sciences research at Purdue

Purdue University will celebrate a century and a half of life sciences research and its ambitions for the future at an open house Friday (Oct. 5) in the newly renovated Hall for Discovery and Learning Research.

The event is part of Purdue's Sesquicentennial, 150 Years of Giant Leaps, a yearlong celebration of Purdue's past, present and future contributions to solving the world's challenges.

The open house will begin at 3:30 p.m. in the main floor atrium with remarks from Suresh Garimella, executive vice president for research and partnerships; Donna Fekete, the John and Donna Krenicki Director of Integrative Neuroscience in the Purdue Institute for Integrative Neuroscience; and Richard Kuhn, the Krenicki Family Director of the Purdue Institute of Inflammation, Immunology and Infectious Disease.

Tours of the third and fourth floors will follow the opening remarks. Light hors d’oeuvres will be served.

The renovation of the Hall for Discovery and Learning Research, or DLR, is part of the university’s five-year, $250 million plan announced in 2016 to advance research that improves the quality of life for people around the globe.

“Life sciences research has been woven into the University’s fabric since its founding in 1869,” Garimella said. “We have an ambitious goal of expanding the impact of our research by bringing together people across disciplines such as engineering and biology to study some of the most pressing medical challenges of our time, including Alzheimer’s disease, autism, Ebola and Zika.”

Shared instrumentation, spaces, ideas

Along with the creation of four new life sciences institutes, the University is supporting the purchase of advanced instrumentation and the development of shared research facilities in buildings such as DLR, whose renovation was completed in summer 2018. The four institutes are:
* Purdue Institute for Drug Discovery.
* Purdue Institute for Plant Sciences.
* Purdue Institute of Inflammation, Immunology and Infectious Disease (PI4D).
* Purdue Institute for Integrative Neuroscience (PIIN).

DLR's fourth floor now houses offices and laboratories for PI4D. The first floor also features PI4D’s Molecular Evolution, Protein Engineering and Production Facility, or MEPEP, which provides protein discovery, engineering and design for Purdue researchers and partner institutions and organizations.

The third floor is similarly equipped for PIIN, with a new histology suite on the first floor and a neuroscience cell engineering core in Bindley Bioscience Center.

Sharing equipment not only saves money, but also promotes collaboration, says Kaethe Beck, director of operations for life sciences in Research and Partnerships: “In order to advance our life sciences research agenda, we need increased collaboration. Traditional, siloed methods won’t solve the world’s most challenging problems. You don’t come up with new ideas by being around people who think just like you, who are trained in the same manner in the same discipline; science needs the diversity of an interdisciplinary space.”

Grant opportunities gained

Even as faculty members were moving their labs into DLR, she says, they were receiving significant new grants that will benefit from the new state-of-the-art, shared resources.

Those grants include:

* A $201,524 grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for PI4D member Robert Stahelin, the Retter Professor of Pharmacy and a professor of medicinal chemistry and molecular pharmacology, to study new methods for inhibiting the Ebola virus.

* A $318,584 R01 award from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for PIIN member Aaron Bowman, professor and head of the School of Health Sciences, to study mechanistic links between manganese neurotoxicity and Alzheimer's disease.

* A $336,582 R01 award, also from NIEHS, for PIIN member Jason Cannon, associate professor of health sciences, to study the possible effects of high-temperature meat cooking on the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

While Stahelin specializes in studying Ebola and Marburg viruses, other Purdue researchers on DLR’s fourth floor focus on Zika, West Nile and Dengue viruses. All of them will have access to PI4D’s new MEPEP lab and can benefit from each other’s expertise in protein studies, Beck says. Similarly, Bowman and Cannon will share advanced cell culture facilities as well as experimental knowledge in studying neurological damage at the cellular level.

“Placing these faculty members in close proximity to each other and with joint access to innovative equipment is bound to produce synergies that have never been possible before,” she says.

Writer: Angela Roberts, 765-494-2629, akroberts@purdue.edu
Sources: Suresh Garimella, garimell@purdue.edu, and Kaethe Beck, kaethe@purdue.edu


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