Purdue focuses on cancer research
11:44 AM July 19, 2005
Associated Press
Purdue University is creating a new cancer research center where scientists from wide-ranging fields will exchange ideas to develop powerful new therapies.
The Oncological Sciences Center announced today eventually will be located at Purdue’s Discovery Park research complex in West Lafayette, where faculty members work on new technologies that can be spun off into biotech companies.
The oncology center is one of four newly created Discovery Park centers that will receive $2.5 million each over the next three years under a $10 million gift from the Lilly Endowment.
Marietta Harrison, the center’s interim director, said scientists, engineers and experts in communication and human behavior will come together under its aegis to work on ideas for early detection, prevention and treatment of cancer.
A key part of the interdisciplinary approach will be nanotechnology, which involves manipulating single atoms and molecules to create tiny machines and devices.
Already, Harrison said Purdue researchers are working on projects aimed at spotting tiny tumors and distinguishing normal cells from cancer cells. Early tumor detection can allow doctors to stop cancer in patients before it spreads.
The center also will fund a nanotech project that researchers hope can use tiny, constructed “particles” that, when injected into a patient, would be capable of seeking out cancer cells and injecting them with a drug that kills them.
“You need all kinds people with different kinds of expertise to put something like that together,” Harrison said. “It’s engineers and biologists and now chemists — so you can see how hugely important the interdisciplinary approach is going to be.”
The new center’s projects will be scattered across Purdue’s campus for now, but fund-raising is under way to build a high-tech home for the center at Discovery Park, she said.
Harrison said the center’s projects might use laboratory space at the park’s Bindley Biosciences Center and the Birck Nanotechnology Center, which opens Oct. 8.
David Johnson, the chief executive of BioCrossroads, a public-private partnership working to invigorate Indiana’s life sciences industry, said the new Purdue center will spur the state’s efforts to create technology-based, high-growth businesses.
“Two years ago when we did a targeting study of the best areas for Indiana’s life sciences future, cancer research came up time and again as one of the most promising pursuits we could have as a state,” Johnson said. “Seeing Purdue come into this is very, very exciting.”
Over the past few years, Discovery Park has attracted more than $109 million in sponsored research and $100 million in donations for building construction. Research conducted at the park has helped form eight startup companies.
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