A Medical Device Daily

The Biogen Idec Foundation (Cambridge, Massachusetts) reported that it has awarded a $1 million Transformational Grant in Science Education to the North Carolina Biotechnology Center (Research Triangle, North Carolina) to support the expansion of the Center's educational training facility for K-12 science teachers. The grant is part of the Biogen Idec Foundation's new transformational grants in Science Education initiative. The Foundation has awarded about $1.5 million in transformational grants since the program was initiated in 2008.

"The Biogen Idec Foundation's primary mission is to encourage innovative approaches to the teaching of science at the middle and high-school levels," said Craig Schneier, PhD, Chair of the Foundation and Biogen Idec's Executive VP of Human Resources, Public Affairs and Communications. "Since its incorporation in 2003, the foundation has awarded almost $10 million in grants for science education and community service. Last year, we initiated a transformational grants program to encourage organizations to undertake major new transformational initiatives that would reinvigorate the way science is taught in the U.S. We are delighted to make this major grant to the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, which has played such a leading role in educating the workforce in North Carolina."

In other grant news, ARUP Laboratories (Salt Lake City) a national clinical and anatomic pathology reference laboratory reported that ARUP's Tanya Sandrock, PhD, Research & Development scientist, received a prestigious National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to research additional HIV therapies. Sandrock also serves as CSO of Integratech Proteomics, (Salt Lake City) a start-up company focused on developing new peptide and small-molecule therapeutics with activity against HIV integrase, an enzyme with an essential function in the retroviral replication cycle.

The NIH grant received by Sandrock aims to obtain a small molecule that mimics the effects of an HIV integrase peptide inhibitor.

Sandrock's research aims to optimize target-peptide displacement assays; screen chemical libraries under high throughput conditions for compounds that disrupt peptide-HIV integrase interaction in yeast; and select the best small-molecular weight drug candidates for further optimization.