Monday, November 17, 2008

Marine Biological Lab lands $15M HHMI grant

By Mass High Tech Staff

The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) has received a $15 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to renovate the Loeb Laboratory, where graduate and post-doctoral students conduct research, including work awarded by the Nobel Prize, MBL officials announced at press conference today.

The grant award news conference was attended by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, Massachusetts Life Sciences Center president and CEO Susan Windham-Bannister and Senate president Therese Murray.

With an additional $10 million in funding from the commonwealth’s $1 billion Life Sciences Act, the total funding to renovate the Loeb Laboratory now extends to $25 million.

The MBL first announced in June its plans to use the state-funded $10 million, in collaboration with the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, to establish a center for regenerative biology and medicine, in addition to planned infrastructure improvements so that the lab can expand its research and education operations.

Gov. Patrick signed the 10-year, $1 billion life sciences industry stimulus legislation into law in June.
 
Robert Curtis, CEO of Regional Technology Development Corp. of Cape Cod, worked with the state Senate on drafting an amendment to the life sciences bill earlier this year that ensured the Cape in general, and the Marine Biological Laboratory and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in particular, received a share of the funds.

The MBL announced last month that Osamu Shimomura, professor emeritus, had been named by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences as one of three recipients of the 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry. The prize recognized Shimomura for his work in isolating and linking the green fluorescent protein, GFP, in the Aequorea victoria jellyfish to cells that may trace nerve cell damage associated with Alzheimer’s disease.