The Academy isn’t the only one giving out awards. Let’s check out the best and brightest biotech videos of the week!

SCIENTIST IN A LEADING ROLE – DR. GEBISA EJETA – Dr. Gebisa Ejeta has not only developed a specialized sorghum crop that is drought and pesticide-resistant, he also helped Ethiopian farmers set up a seed distribution center of this higher-yielding crop for their community. For his work, he was the recipient of the 2009 World Food Prize. You can watch BIOTECanada interview Dr. Ejeta about how the private sector can help in agricultural development.

BEST (BIG) PICTURE – BILL GATES – Bill Gates can see the big picture. That’s why the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation donated $10 million to help develop life-saving vaccines earlier this year. Check out this clip from his interview with CNN as he talks about the power of vaccines.

BEST ENSEMBLE CAST – HAWAIIAN FARMERS – Here’s a preview of the latest video from the Hawaii Crop Improvement Association (HCIA) highlighting the benefits that agricultural biotechnology is having on Hawaii. Learn from local scientists, farmers and economists and discover how truly powerful the role of biotechnology is in feeding the world.

SENATOR IN A LEADING (THE WAY) ROLE – SENATOR TOM BUTLER – Senator Tom Butler (D-Alabama) sure knows how to lead the way. He has hopes for a “400 mile long campus of cancer research” beginning in Alabama. Listen to him speak of the advantages that biotechnology can bring to his home state.

BEST SOUND (OFF) – SOCALBIO – Hear these biotech media experts sound off at the 18th annual SoCalBio Networking Forum from February 25th, 2010. It featured a panel of print and broadcast journalists who shared tips on how biotech and device entrepreneurs could use the media to promote their companies and technologies. Panelists included Deborah Crowe (LA Business Journal), Gerri Shaftel (Fox 11 News), James Flanigan (NY Times), Frank Mottek (KNX 1070) and Mark Bernheimer (MediaWorks Resource Group). Click here for part two.

Good morning and Happy First-Friday-in-March! Spring can’t get here fast enough, but the good news is you can get your biotechnology fix all year round!

POTENTIAL CANCER VACCINE DEVELOPED – According to a new study by Dutch researchers, an experimental vaccine that utilizes dendritic cells (a form of immune system cells) is not only safe to use but also induces an immune T-cell response against mesotheliomia tumors. Dr. Joachim Aerts of the Erasmus Medical Center explains the drawbacks of mesothelioma and the potential of this treatment:

“The major problem in mesothelioma is that the immunosuppressive environment caused by the tumor will negatively influence our therapy so we are now working on a method to lower this immunosuppressive environment,” Aerts said. “We hope that by further development of our method it will be possible to increase survival in patients with mesothelioma and eventually vaccinate persons who have been in contact with asbestos to prevent them from getting asbestos related diseases.”

ALGAE INDUSTRY KEEPS ROLLING – This recent post from The Energy Collective outlines some recent developments in the Algae biofuel industry, focusing on two recent Department of Energy funding initiatives totaling over $10 million for Honeywell’s UOP business and DuPont:

In UOP’s case, the funding will be used for the design of a demonstration system that will capture carbon dioxide from exhaust stacks at Honeywell’s manufacturing facility in Hopewell, Virginia, and deliver the captured CO2 to a cultivation system for algae. Algal oil will be extracted from the algae for biofuel feedstock, and the algae residual can be converted to pyrolysis oil, which can be burned to generate renewable electricity.

And as for DuPont:

For DuPont, the $8.8m funding given by DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) will help the company’s macroalgae-to-isobutanol project, which will establish technology and intellectual property in the use of macroalgae for biobutanol production. Butamax™ Advanced Biofuels LLC, a joint venture between DuPont and BP, will be responsible for commercialization of the resulting technology package.

This comes after the recent announcement from BIO urging congress to address the barriers to the commercialization of Algae biofuels.

ALL STEM CELLS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL – A recent study of lab mice revealed that there are two distinct kinds of self-renewing blood cells, which may lead to a better understanding of how to treat blood diseases. According to co-author Grant Challen of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston:

“For the longest time, people always thought there was one single type of blood stem cell in the bone marrow that continually replenished the blood system throughout the life of a person. Recent studies have hinted that blood stem cells have distinct behaviors, but no one had been able to pinpoint the different kinds of cells. We’re the first group to actually identify them using different markers.”

The article continued:

Challen and colleagues used a special dye to stain stem cells removed from mouse bone marrow. Some stem cells expelled the dye at different rates, which, along with other well-known stem cell markers, allowed the researchers to sort these cells into two classes. This dye difference told researchers that the stem cells looked different, but not whether the cells acted differently, too.

Good morning biotech community! It’s all genetics, all the time in today’s roundup. Let’s check it out.

GENETIC SEQUENCING OF MICROBES HELPS TO CURE DIGESTIVE DISEASES – Scientists at France’s National Institute for Agricultural Research unveiled a complete genetic panorama of microbes in the human digestive track, an advance that could help cure ulcers and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). It took more than 100 researchers working over two years to find over 3.3 million distinct genes spread across 1,000 species of single-celled organisms, virtually all bacteria. Co-author of the study, Jeroen Raes, a scientist at Vrije University in Brussels, said:

“The vast majority of bacteria found were not known before. But now we can start sorting out what they do in terms of function, and how they might relate to disease.”

GENETIC PATTERNS HELP IDENTIFY YEAST INFECTIONS – Researchers at Duke University developed a test that looks for specific patterns of genes that, when switched on, may lead to a better way of diagnosing dangerous yeast infections in the blood:

They said mice infected with the Candida albicans fungus have a telltale signature of genes that are active, or expressed, that is not found in the blood of healthy mice. Candida is the fourth most common bloodstream infection in the United States, yet it is often hard to distinguish from a bacterial infection. This study provides the basis for development of a blood-gene expression tests in humans to detect a life-threatening infection earlier than can be done using currently available methods”

GENES CAN HELP YOU FIT INTO YOUR JEANS – Researchers at Stanford University, backed by Interleukin Genetics, developed a new genetic test that may help dieters decide whether they would lose more weight on a low-fat diet that cuts carbohydrates or a more balanced approach. According to Christopher Gardner at Stanford:

“The potential of using genetic information to achieve this magnitude of weight loss without pharmaceutical intervention would be important in helping to solve the pervasive problem of excessive weight in our society.”

What’s new and exciting in the world of biotechnology today?!

EUROPEAN UNION APPROVES BIOTECH POTATO – Huge news coming out of Europe as the EU approved the first new genetically modified crop for domestic growing in over a decade. The decision will allow farmers to grow Amflora potatoes developed by the German-based BASF. But don’t even think about eating these bad boys; they’re being produced solely for industrial or animal feed purposes. The EU’s new health commissioner, John Dalli, is confident in the crops safety:

“Responsible innovation will be my guiding principle when dealing with innovative technologies. After an extensive and thorough review … it became clear to me that there were no new scientific issues that merited further assessment,” Dalli said. “All scientific issues, particularly those concerning safety, had been fully addressed. Any delay would have simply been unjustified.”

MARINE INVERTIBRATE OFFERS NEW HOPE FOR ALZHEIMER’S PATIENTS – The sea squirt is a marine organism with a hard outer shell and soft body that spends its whole life attached to underwater structures. But so what? Well, these little guys share about 80 percent of their genes with humans, including the genes to develop the types of plaques that accumulate in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. So…

This led San Diego State University scientists to try to study Alzheimer’s disease in sea squirts. They took a mutant protein found in human families with hereditary Alzheimer’s disease and put it in immature, sea squirt tadpoles. This resulted in aggressive development of plaques in the tadpoles’ brains in just one day, along with accompanying behavioral defects. However, these effects were reversed when the tadpoles were given an experimental drug designed to prevent plaque formation.

According to the researchers, their findings suggest that sea squirts may offer an excellent model for testing new Alzheimer’s drugs.

STOMACH HORMONE USED TO TREAT LIVER FIBROSIS – Scientists at Barcelona Hospital say they’ve found that lab rats treated with ghrelin, a stomach hormone, displayed a reduction in liver fibrosis. This comes just a day after we showed you how estrogen hormone receptors were used in the treatment of prostate cancer.

…Ghrelin reduced the amount of fibrogenic cells by 25 percent in the treated rodents, as well as preventing acute liver damage and reducing oxidative stress and inflammation. Dr. Ramon Bataller, lead author of the study, said there are no current anti-fibrotic therapies for patients with liver disease, such as hepatitis, cirrhosis and liver cancer.

BIOFUEL BONUS – And don’t forget to check out Biofuels Digest’s special report on aviation biofuels. This is a hot topic and quite an innovative use of biotechnology!

In today’s roundup: Big news for prostate cancer, biofuels and biotech crops. Let’s take a look…

HEAL: USING ESTROGEN TO BATTLE PROSTATE CANCER – Biomedical researchers at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australian have identified a new way to treat prostate cancer using a drug compound to selectively activate the prostate’s beta estrogen receptor cells. Co-author of the study, Gail Risbridger, explained the innovation behind the use of hormones:

…this [process] has the effect of targeting for cell death a small but important population of cells in the prostate cancer tumor that are often resistant to conventional therapy and can lead to recurrent incurable disease…the studies provided proof of the controversial concept that estrogens — hormones mainly thought to be important for women — could be good for men and used therapeutically to treat prostate cancer.

FEED: EU APPROVES MONSANTO’S GM CORN – Reuters is reporting that The European Commission said has approved three genetically modified maize varieties made by American agricultural biotech firm Monsanto for food and feed uses and import and processing in the European Union

“The three GM maize types MON863xMON810, MON863xNK603, and MON863xMON810xNK603, received a positive opinion from EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) and underwent the full authorisation procedure set out in the EU legislation,” the Commission said in a statement.

FUEL: EFFICIENCY AND COOPERATION SPELLS THE FUTURE OF BIOFUEL - Yesterday, Biofuels Digest outlined the processes behind two innovative biofuel solutions that, when combined, may lead to the direct conversion of poplar trees into high-density biofuels such as jet fuel. The first, developed at the University of Wisconsin, involves the direct conversion of cellulose to jet fuel via an old fuel pathway (GVLs) that have now been made substantially more efficient.

To envision it, first think about biodiesel, and how that is produced from virgin or waste oils by a process called transesterification. It’s a process found in nature — and if you’ve ever had a ripe Gouda cheese, one of the flavoring components is a product called a lactone, ultimately formed from milk but specifically a transesterification of a hydroxy fatty acid. Lactones, like milk products, are many in number and wide in uses. They are divided by the number of carbon molecules — and generally speaking, the more carbon, the more dense a fuel made from them. A five-carbon lactone is valerolactone (now you know where Valero got its name), and one type of valerolactone is gamma-valerolactone (GVL) referring to the location of carbon in its molecular chain.

The second project, headed by researchers at the University of Maryland and Bowie State University and funded by a $3.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Plant Genome Research Project, utilizes the recently completed poplar tree genome and focuses on ways to improve the poplar tree’s nitrogen processing capability, enhancing its growth rate and feasibility for use in fuel production:

“What we’re looking for is the most efficient way for these plants to process nitrogen,” explained Ganesh Sriram, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the UNiversity of Maryland. “It’s like dealing with traffic. Imagine you’ve got cars on a road, each can only hold one passenger, and that can’t be changed. If you want more people to get to a destination in a certain amount of time, you can increase the speed limits, add more traffic lanes, reroute the cars onto parallel roads, avoid delays, or change the timing of the traffic lights. That’s what we’re doing on a genetic and molecular level for poplar.”

The Olympics may be over (sigh) but biotech is like that Energizer bunny … it keeps going on and on and on and on …

Our videos for the past week include:

BIOTECH AS THE ENTREPRENEURIAL PARADIGM – Did I just write that?  A bit over the top but this is the thrust of a fascinating a series of videos by Ronald Openshaw, Chief Executive of Lucia Capital. He goes through what he sees as the top ten rules for management of emerging companies keying off lessons from biotech companies.  Very good stuff.

CALLING ALL HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS – Label this one MIT meets high school biotech. This one of a series of videos from MIT introduces high school students to a topic they would not ordinarily study in school, biotechnology, and to different applications of biotechnology that relate to the main theme of the module – making the desert greener.

IF YOU’RE AN AFFLUENT ANTI-GMO TYPE, PLEASE WATCH THIS – It is very nice for folks from affluent countries to grumble about GMOs.  Funny.  You don’t hear that type of grumbling from people in nutrition starved countries … like Ghana.  Here’s an interview with Prof. Walter Alhassan, coordinator for the Project on Strengthening Capacity for Safe Biotechnology Managemt in sub-Sahara Africa (SABIMA), FARA Headquarters, Accra, Ghana.

NINE BILLION SERVED – That’s biotech, not McDonalds.  And yes, that’s the number of people we are going to have to feed not just once … but on a daily basis.  How?  Glad you asked.  Yes, biotech.  This is one of a series of videos of the recent symposium in Washington DC hosted by BIO (our sponsor), CropLife Inernational, and Council for Agriculture Science Technology.

DR. TARGAN’S BACK! – Talk about the Energizer Bunny.  Dr. Targan is just pumping out videos left and right.  Produced by BIO (our sponsor) these videos are targeted to junior and high school students.  This one is all about genetically engineered animals.

With the help of biotechnology, scientists are discovering new ways to genetically engineer animals to not only help them become resistant to deadly diseases and reduce their carbon footprint, but also to produce proteins used in pharmaceuticals to treat blood clots, malaria, hemophilia, and arthritis. Dr. Targan explains how genetic engineering in animals works, as well as a few of the benefits that both animals and humans can appreciate.

Now for a few stories that ran over the weekend worth checking out …

• MONSANTO BETTING ON CLIMATE CHANGE – That was the title of an article in the St. Louis Post.  You may not think it is happening but Monsanto scientists do.
• UNIVERSITIES FIGHT ATTEMPTS TO END GENE PATENTS – Good piece in the Chronicle of Education on this difficult topic.
• BIOTECH ON DISPLAY – This week in Winston-Salem, North Carolina at the Translational Regenerative Medicine Forum.

Happy Friday everyone! Congratulations, you made it through a rough work week! So go out and celebrate tonight! But first, let’s see how biotechnology is HEALING, FUELING and FEEDING your world today!

HEAL: MAYO CLINIC MAKES PANCREATIC CANCER BREAKTHROUGH – Scientists at the Mayo Clinic have discovered an oncogene that is already important cases of colon and lung cancer is also linked with poor pancreatic cancer survival. The researchers said they determined the oncogene PKC-iota is over-produced in pancreatic cancer and that genetically inhibiting it in laboratory animals led to a significant decrease in pancreatic tumor growth and spread:

The drug, aurothiomalate, is being tested in a phase I clinical trial in patients with lung cancer at Mayo Clinic’s sites in Minnesota and Arizona. Based on findings to date, a phase II clinical trial is being planned to combine aurothiomalate with agents targeted at other molecules involved in cancer growth.

FUEL: COMPANY IS “WASTING” FUEL- Waste company giant, Waste Management, has invested a cool $51.5 million in Enerkem, a Quebec-based company that turns municipal solid waste, construction wood and agricultural residue into a gas that can be refined into ethanol. This is just one step in a greater goal of reaching sustainability:

Waste Management operates 115 landfill gas-to-energy facilities that use methane from decomposing organic material to generate electricity, according to the company. It also has 16 waste-to-energy facilities that use mixed municipal sold waste to generate electricity and reduce its need for fossil fuels. In all, Waste Management generates enough electricity to power 700,000 homes every day.

FEED: THE STATE OF BIOTECH CROPS – In the wake of the recent ISSAAA report that revealed a record 14 million farmers in 25 countries are using agricultural biotechnology, The Economist profiled the current state of biotech crops, including the growth potential in China:

The greatest potential for growth is probably in China. In late November the government gave its blessing to GM varieties of rice and maize. Both were developed by local researchers, without funding or other help from Western firms. As rice is the most important food crop in the world and maize is the main form of animal feed, these decisions could have a big impact. Clive James of ISAAA calculates that the GM rice alone could deliver benefits (in the form of higher yields, greater productivity, savings on pesticides and fertilisers, and so on) of $4 billion a year to China’s 100m-odd rice-growing households.