Frontiers Conference Targets Research Possibilities

In a first-of-its-kind event, a variety of science and engineering faculty stood before an audience of company representatives and others to give a day's worth of presentations on interesting and potentially marketable research under way at Duke.

Called Duke Frontiers 2004, the invitation-only session May 4 at the Levine Science Research Building's Love Auditorium attracted nearly 40 representatives of companies ranging from pharmaceutical giants to local startups. They met with university leaders and scientists eager to discuss the prospects for collaboration.

The conference was part of what Duke Provost Peter Lange called the "translational effort" to make use of basic research that begins in university laboratories. "It is not only important that we continue and in fact amplify the amount of basic research that we do, but also that we find ways to translate that research into useful ways of engaging social needs," Lange said during his opening talk.

Robert McMahan, senior science and technology advisor to North Carolina's governor, reiterated the theme in follow-up remarks. "If we are to create economic benefits from innovation, the generation of new knowledge must be combined with its rapid deployment," McMahan said. "This meeting addresses that challenge."

During sessions moderated by different deans, faculty members from several Duke schools presented brief talks on a variety of research that's both interesting and potentially open to industrial spin-offs.

Zack Robbins, associate director of corporate relations in the University Development office, said officials organized Duke Frontiers 2004 in part to address a shortcoming he's heard from companies. "There was no way to get an overview of scientific research at Duke," Robbins said.

Business attendees said they appreciated what Frontiers provided. The meeting was "an opportunity to get it all in one day," said Ed Whitehorne, a member of two local groups of venture capitalists that support new businesses. "I'm seeing a lot of basic research that'll make its way into the marketplace."

Jim Bouten, from another venture capital firm called Aurora Funds, said he heard "a couple of ideas that sound really interesting and have a lot of potential," adding that the Frontiers program was "definitely something worth repeating."

Among the day's talks was one by associate biochemistry professor Homme Hellinga, who described efforts to tap natural building blocks to build synthetic systems "that don't exist in nature" for use in tiny sensors that could monitor bodily chemicals. Associate computer science professor Alvin Lebeck discussed research to build futuristic and ultra-small computer systems out of DNA, while Farshid Guilsak, associate professor of surgery and biomedical engineering, outlined his work on recrafting fat cells to repair or regenerate diseased or damaged body tissues.

Other speakers included Roni Avissar, the chair of the Pratt School's civil and environmental engineering department, who described new ideas for monitoring pollutants or biowarfare agents. Jonathan Freedman, a Nicholas school professor of molecular toxicology, described how nematode worms might be used to reduce the cost and time of screening for developmental and neurotoxicological chemical agents that could harm people.

Keynote speaker Tadataka Yamada, chairman of research and development at GlaxoSmithKline, described why his company, with facilities in Research Triangle Park, began pilot research collaborations in 2001 with investigators at Duke and three other universities.

While it now costs his company $1.7 billion to bring a new drug to market, the price tag would be much higher without the heavily automated and computerized in-house facilities that GlaxoSmithKline uses for research, he told the conference.

But at a certain intermediate stage in the drug discovery process, it is also important to "figure out how to be large and small at the same time" by organizing much smaller "centers of excellence," he said.

Duke Medical Center researchers are now collaborating with such a center at RTP, and these types of university-company interactions are already substantially boosting the pace of drug discovery, Yamada said. "This has really been a motivating factor for all of us in the company."