January 24, 2002-Vol33n14: Bioinformatics center moves forward

VOLUME 33, NUMBER 14

THURSDAY, January 24, 2002

Bioinformatics center moves forward
Center of excellence sees pledges of state, federal, private funding of $200 million

By ELLEN GOLDBAUM
Contributing Editor

With pledges of state, federal and private funding totaling more than $200 million, the Buffalo Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics—a collaborative effort involving New York State, industry partners and academic institutions that promises to transform the Western New York economy—has taken a major step toward becoming a reality.

President William R. Greiner joins Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in announcing $3.1 million in federal funding for the center.

The center will merge high-end technology, including supercomputing and visualization, with expertise in genomics, proteomics, and bioimaging to foster advances in science and health care. An emerging discipline, bioinformatics uses the power of supercomputers to interpret data in the biological sciences at the molecular level.

The center is a natural progression of the pioneering work that the center's major research partners—UB, Roswell Park Cancer Institute and Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute—have been doing for years.

On Dec. 6, Gov. George E. Pataki—who first proposed the center a year ago—traveled to Buffalo to announce $50 million in state funding and more than $150 million in private sector funding.

The next day, U.S. Rep. Tom Reynolds announced a $3 million earmark in the House version of the defense appropriation bill. U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton worked hard to supplement this earmark in the Senate, and on Dec. 21, she and Reynolds announced $3.1 million in funds from two separate Congressional appropriations, providing important start-up costs for the initiative.

Sen. Charles Schumer (center) dons 3-D glasses during a December visit to the Center for Computational Research. Joining Schumer were Tom Furlani (left) and Russ Miller (right).

Photos: Frank Miller

The Buffalo Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics is an integral part of Pataki's plan to develop centers of excellence across the state to harness the strengths of universities and the private sector to create strategically targeted high-technology centers of innovation, all aimed at spurring economic development and creating jobs.

During the past year, the center has attracted funding from major national corporations.

In addition to the "initial installment" of $50 million from New York State, Pataki noted the following commitments in software, hardware, venture capital, cash and equipment to date from the industry partners:

Veridian will contribute $62.5 million

Compaq has pledged $42.6 million

Informax will provide $20.8 million

A group of Western New York businesses is investing $15 million

Stryker Communications is providing $7.2 million to create a communications network for the center

Dell Computer Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. together are providing more than $1 million

Other partners include Invitrogen Corp., Q-Chem, SGI, Amersham Pharmacia Biotech, AT&T, Wyeth Lederle, Human Genome Sciences, Inc. and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

The level of the commitment of New York State and the industry and academic partners, Pataki said, will assure the center will be "the state-of-the-art facility" for bioinformatics, "not just in the United States, but in the world."

He predicted that it will "transform Western New York into a 21st-century economy," creating "thousands of jobs, thousands of high-paying, high-tech, 21st-century jobs" for residents of Buffalo, Western New York and New York State.

SUNY Chancellor Robert L. King, who also appeared at the Dec. 6 news conference, pointed out that when he was appointed chancellor, he told the campus presidents and members of the board of trustees that he thought it should be at the top of his agenda "to fully integrate" the state university into the state's economy, "linking our graduates and faculty, our libraries and research capabilities into New York's economy."

The governor's "centers of excellence concept" is helping SUNY realize that goal, King added.

"Here at UB, and at our campuses at Albany and at Stony Brook, new words are creeping into our lexicon—bioinformatics, nanosciences and genomics, to name a few," he said.

"This is happening because of this marvelous integration of the power and capabilities of these wonderful universities with the business community and the support that we get from our government.

"This effort is transforming our state with strategic investments into what this country's economic powerhouse for the 21st century will be."

President William R. Greiner thanked Pataki for his vision and leadership and his "continuing commitment to Buffalo Niagara. It is much appreciated in this region and we will work to make you proud."

Pataki said the center will be headquartered in a 150,000-square-foot facility to be built near Buffalo's medical corridor. The facility, he added, will house drug-design and research laboratories, high-performance computational facilities, 3-D visualization capabilities, product commercialization space and workforce training facilities.

Speaking on behalf of the center's corporate partners, Bill Blake, worldwide vice president for high performance technical computing with Compaq, said the center "will be a very successful example of a private-public partnership moving ahead in science and using that science to generate a strong industrial base in this region."

Blake said Compaq has been involved with centers of excellence in the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Taiwan. Its relationship with the Buffalo center, he added, will be "the most serious and is the highest level of commitment we're going to have."

Referring to the head of the company that succeeded in sequencing the human genome—former UB faculty member Craig Venter and his company, Celera Genomics—Blake noted that the Buffalo Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics will take the products of that revolutionary research and, in turn, create future scientific revolutions.

"This center will spawn the next generation of Dr. Venters and the next generation of Celera Genomics here in the Buffalo area," he said.