A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

Two Arizona-based philanthropic organizations have committed $45 million to fund an initiative to develop personalized molecular diagnostics.

Under the Partnership for Personalized Medicine, The Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust has committed $35 million and the Flinn Foundation has granted $10 million to bring together a range of resources to advance global personalized medicine.

Dr. Lee Hartwell, 2001 Nobel laureate and director of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Seattle), will lead this effort. The Hutchinson Center uses molecular diagnostics for the early detection and clinical management of cancer and other diseases. In addition to his current position as president and director of the Hutchinson Center, he will chair the partnership executive committee, which includes Dr. George Poste, director of the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University (Tempe), and Dr. Jeffrey Trent, president and scientific director of the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen; Phoenix).

“It is a tremendous opportunity for me to be a part of this new model for improving health while reducing healthcare costs that is being funded by the Piper and Flinn foundations,” Hartwell said. “The collaboration between TGen, the Biodesign Institute at ASU, other institutions in Arizona and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center brings together enormous expertise to tackle major challenges in bringing new science and technology to disease management.”

The cornerstone of the Partnership is the creation of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Personalized Diagnostics that draws upon the scientific strengths of two of the state’s leading bioscience entities, TGen and the Biodesign Institute at ASU, each of which will contribute significant laboratory space to the effort.

Additionally, an industrial scale, high-throughput proteomics production facility will be established that taps expertise at both TGen and the Biodesign Institute at ASU in robotics, protein analysis and computing.

According to John Murphy, president and CEO of the Flinn Foundation, biomarker discovery and diagnostic development could ultimately lead to earlier disease detection and more precise disease management. “To leverage Arizona’s institutional assets, the Flinn Foundation’s grant commitment to TGen will link Arizona’s research universities, health care providers, research institutes and industry partners throughout the state to support the collection and storage of biospecimens and drive Arizona-centric demonstration projects,” Murphy said.

Approximately 50% of the Flinn Fund for Arizona Proteomics Research will be available to promote research collaborations to leverage the state’s significant institutional resources in this field, Murphy added, with the balance supporting the creation of a high-throughput proteomics production facility.

In other grants/contracts news: The Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI; Seattle), a non-profit institute, reported receiving a $252,000 grant from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust (Vancouver, Washington) for “core” research equipment.

IDRI said that the grant will enable it to assemble an equipment core to enhance its basic research on immune responses against infectious diseases. IDRI’s mission is to research and develop technologies to be used against diseases that continue to burden individuals and countries in the developing world.

IDRI projects enabled under the Murdock grant are focused on chronic infections resulting in leishmaniasis, tuberculosis, trachoma, Buruli ulcer, leprosy, and Chagas disease, presenting major public health burdens and causing premature death or disability.

The Murdock Trust equipment grant will enable IDRI to purchase large equipment difficult to obtain with conventional funding. The equipment core will enable IDRI’s researchers to engage in high-throughput and state-of-the-art assays.

The Murdock Charitable Trust has focused its grant efforts in five Pacific Northwest states: Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington.