Health Care

Seattle Biomed Announces Major Scientific Expansion

By Seattle Business Magazine March 14, 2011

Seattle Biomedical Research Institute (Seattle BioMed) today announced that 42 researchers from the Institute for Systems Biology, an organization launched by biotech superstar Leroy Hood, will join Seattle Biomed this spring.

The institute said the move is part of an effort to integrate a systems biology approach to its global infectious disease research, an approach it says will allow it to move away from “trial and error” toward a more predictive approach to research.

As part of the move, Alan Aderem, cofounder and former director of the Seattle-based Institute for Systems Biology will join Seattle Biomed as director.

Seattle BioMed is taking the systems approach “with the specific purpose of accelerating the discovery and development of vaccines, drugs and diagnostic tools to combat the worlds deadliest diseases, said Seattle BioMed president and founder Ken Stuart, Ph.D.

The power of systems biology lies in its capacity to predict the behavior of a biological system,” said Aderem. “If we have the ability to predict whether a drug or vaccine candidate for malaria, AIDS or tuberculosis will work before it goes into large-scale clinical trials, we could move away from todays typical trial and error method toward a more powerful predictive approach to vaccine and drug discovery and development, he said.

On Jan. 1, 2012, Aderem will become president and Stuart will maintain an active role at Seattle BioMed, assuming the title of founder and president emeritus and becoming a member of the Seattle BioMed Board of Trustees. During the coming months, Stuart and Aderem who have been colleagues and collaborators for nearly 20 years will work side by side to plan and implement Seattle BioMeds expanded research activities. Each will maintain his own research laboratory and will also continue respective faculty appointments at the University of Washington.

John Aitchison, Ph.D., former associate director of ISB and a systems biology pioneer, will also join Seattle BioMed. His primary position will be as director of integrative biology at Seattle BioMed. He will also retain a position at ISB to continue and further develop collaborative research projects. ISBs upcoming move to the South Lake Union neighborhood, where we located more than seven years ago, provides proximity that makes it even more convenient for scientific interaction, said Stuart.

Systems biology is a comprehensive approach to understanding the network of biological processes that influence how pathogens function and how people recover from or succumb to disease. Markedly different from the study of single genes or proteins, the systems biology approach, which is founded on genomics, was developed using model systems and a wide range of high-tech and computational tools is designed to enable researchers to predict the behavior of complex biological systems.

Imagine trying to comprehend how a car works by looking only at the tires, said Stuart. Then think about how much better you can understand how a car performs by studying all the parts and how they work together.

Funding for the first phase of Seattle BioMeds scientific expansion comes from a $7 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to begin the integration of systems biology and infectious disease. Seattle BioMed will accelerate its fundraising efforts to complete the expansion, with a focus on funding additional recruitments, pilot projects and specialized facilities and technologies.

Scientific Endeavor Follows Personal Interest

A native of South Africa, Aderem is achieving his goal of marrying his personal interests in global health with his passion for systems biology. My mom was a physician with an exclusively underprivileged practice, Aderem explained. As a child, I accompanied her when she visited patients in the townships and saw, first hand, the effect of poverty on human health.

As a young adult, Aderem organized township communities to fight for better living conditions, and this led to five years of house arrest by the apartheid regime. These experiences solidified his commitment to tackling diseases of poverty. I saw the impact of infectious diseases firsthand, and now Im seeing diseases like HIV and tuberculosis devastate my home country, he said.

Seattle Biomed conducts research that provides the foundation for new drugs, vaccines and diagnostics related to such infectious diseases as malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.

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