 
|
|||||||||||||
              
|
CMU, Pitt pondering big biotech effort aimed at growing human organs
Friday, November 12, 1999 By Bill Schackner, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
First, Carnegie Mellon University made its mark in computers. Then in robotics. Now, the school's latest push could put it in the business of growing human organs with its research neighbor down the street.
At least that's the hope of campus leaders, who say they are in talks with the University of Pittsburgh that could produce a partnership in several areas of biotechnology, from creating images of the brain's cognitive functions to growing organs for transplantation.
President Jared Cohon said Carnegie Mellon will need to raise tens of millions of dollars to successfully establish a foothold in biotechnology, a rapidly expanding field in which his school has decided it must become more prominent.
Carnegie Mellon has no medical school and would be hard-pressed by itself to rival the biotechnology efforts of such powerhouses as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University, Cohon said. But it could be a different story if his school pairs its know-how in computers and information technology with an established medical complex, such as Pitt's.
Carnegie Mellon and Pitt for several months have been discussing areas of mutual interest that could ultimately extend far beyond any collaborations to date between the two schools, Cohon said.
He said talks are in the formative stages, and that Pitt must decide how much of Carnegie Mellon's plan complements its own biotechnology research.
"It would be presumptuous of me to say we are going to do all of this with Pitt. Faculties of the two institutions have talked to each other, administrators have talked to each other and those conversations are continuing," he said.
Money is an issue
Pitt Chancellor Mark Nordenberg said talks between both institutions are "serious." Dr. Arthur Levine, Pitt's senior vice chancellor for health sciences, called them "very promising" yesterday, but noted a major and familiar obstacle: money.
Some work could be pursued with limited funding, Levine said, but it would likely take $100 million to $200 million to put into action all the areas that the schools want to pursue jointly.
"If you really want to see this thing take off you really have to raise quite a bit of money," he said.
Dollars notwithstanding, Pitt's health sciences complex and the work it has already done in biotechnology could fit nicely with Carnegie Mellon, one of the nation's leading computer campuses, Levine said.
"Biotechnology is obviously a tremendously important growth area in the United States, probably our major growth industry," he said. "For us to use that industry as an economic engine for Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania, putting our strengths together will make that engine much more powerful and competitive."
Cohon said one bold area of collaboration being looked at involves developing the capability to grow skin, new tissues, bone and even organs such as livers from existing human cells. It's an extreme extension of the stem cell and tissue engineering research already being pursued in Pittsburgh and elsewhere, he said.
"We think this is especially appealing because of Pitt's great strength in transplantation," Cohon said. "I've heard people refer to Pittsburgh as the transplant capital of the world. Well, we'd like to reinforce that leadership position, but in the future, they will be artificially grown organs instead of organs harvested from bodies.
"The organ production part of this is the ultimate goal, but there are a lot of things you can do along the way," he said. "It's already the case that some tissues are being created in this way. There is such a thing as artificial skin that they use now to graft [onto] burn victims."
Over the years, Carnegie Mellon has pioneered robots able to explore volcanoes and has produced a generation of computer graduates who wrestle with NASA problems and animate Hollywood movies.
But its reach in biotechnology has been limited. It began taking a harder look at the field in 1997 as part of the school's strategic planning process.
Just over a year ago, it disclosed plans to mount a major teaching and research push in that area but did not define them. Now it's getting specific.
A trio of goals
Over the last year, a faculty panel has narrowed the field to three areas. As it did with computers a quarter century ago, Carnegie Mellon will look for areas in which it believes the school can develop a strong niche. Cohon said those targeted areas are continuing to be refined and include:
Cohon said his school wants to tackle medical ethics questions such as safeguarding privacy in an age when patient information can be transported globally with a few clicks of a mouse.
The school is still identifying how many new faculty members may be needed to support its biotechnology push. It may try to quicken the rise by recruiting one or more leading researchers from campuses with more established programs.
"If we're going to create more strength than we have, it's going to require hiring some excellent senior people," Cohon said.
It also remains to be seen if biotechnology can be accommodated in existing campus buildings or whether new ones would be needed.
If construction takes place, the university's west campus would be one possibility. Carnegie Mellon is in the early stages of creating a master plan for that side of the campus now that it has largely completed east campus development with such projects as the $47 million University Center and the $32 million Purnell Center for the Arts.
A draft of the master plan is expected late next spring.
Both Pitt and Carnegie Mellon have already launched a variety of joint ventures, among them the highly successful Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.
Cohon said a collaboration between his school and Pitt could help Carnegie Mellon obtain more research money from government agencies increasingly interested in collaborative research.
Last month, Pitt and Carnegie Mellon received a $10 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to establish the Center for the Study of Mind-Body Interactions and Health.
At Carnegie Mellon, Susan Henry, dean of the Mellon College of Science, said there is an analogy between the steps her school is taking now and ones it took decades ago to become a major player in computing.
"We have a decision to make now about whether we want to continue to be a path leader, a path leader in areas that are going to define the future of scientific research," she said. "I think everyone here wants to continue to be a leader."
|
||||||||||||
Stem cell and tissue engineering, including the organ program Cohon hopes to pursue with Pitt.