As a faculty member of the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research, or QB3, Desai studies how to create microtextured membranes that will act as a welcoming home for stem cells and tissues. In order to do this, she has to interact with and understand biomedical and clinical scientists who speak entirely different technical languages. The future payoff may be tissues or organs that can be grown in incubators from a few cells.

In a strange way, what Desai is doing for cells is much like what QB3 is trying to do on a much larger scale. QB3, opened in February 2005, is dedicated to creating a supportive environment for breakthrough innovations like Desai's and to inviting industrial cooperation that will launch technologies into the wider world.

"QB3 was launched as a part of a great experiment by the state of California," says QB3 Executive Director Regis Kelly. "It is one of four institutes of science and innovation that were launched to make sure that California stays in the lead technologically and to stimulate industry."

QB3 uses existing state strengths in biotechnology and information technology as a springboard to future inventions, Kelly says. But in order to have the biggest impact, the institute also encourages researchers from very different scientific backgrounds to work together on projects. "We know that the biggest innovations occur at the interfaces of disciplines," he says. "So if we can get smart people from different fields to work together, we can launch new creativity."

Interdisciplinary studies have been a hot topic for a few years, but putting the idea into practice has been harder than it might seem. In traditional universities and institutes, Kelly says, the transfer of information between the basic sciences and clinical sciences has been incredibly inefficient.

"It often seemed that the most effective way of sharing such information was on flights to or from Washington," he says. "That was the only way you could ever sit down with a colleague for five hours and find that you shared a common interest."

QB3 doesn't leave these meetings to chance. Researchers start working in cross-disciplinary teams at the outset.

"As an engineer, I don't need my colleagues to be more engineers," Desai says. "I need colleagues who have biological and medical expertise.

"Mixing engineers with biologists and clinicians allows people to come up with new modalities to solve critical health care problems in a way that they wouldn't do within traditional departments," Desai says. QB3 is also perfectly located geographically, Desai feels. "Mission Bay is at a nexus of research and industry at UCSF, in the East Bay and on the Peninsula."

The result is a research environment that is attracting scientists from all over the country. Desai herself is a recent transplant from Boston University. In addition to her faculty appointment at QB3, she holds appointments in the Department of Physiology and the Program in Bioengineering.

In Desai's own work, that means working with biochemists and cellular biologists to understand how a membrane can provide the right structural and chemical clues to make cells thrive and multiply. Other work she is doing focuses on creating nanoporous devices that will release a steady dosage of drugs or peptides over a long period.

The ultimate goal, of course, is to get work out of the laboratory and into the hands of people who will use it. Doing that requires the active cooperation of the biotechnology industry, which also plays a role beginning early on in the research process. Desai, for instance, is already interacting with companies like Alza and Johnson & Johnson about the drug delivery and tissue engineering technologies she is developing.

QB3's directive to push the transfer of technology out to industry and the public is seen as a plus by Kelly and other QB3 scientists, a quality that sets them apart from other research institutes.

"There are other places that are trying to do this, like Bio-X at Stanford, the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle and the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge," Kelly says. "It's a tremendous advantage that we are mandated to help the California economy. We always have to think about that, and if we are not, then we have to ask why not? The others aren't required to do that."

Source: Chris Vaughan

First posted October 26, 2005

Last updated October 26, 2005

UCSF Mission Bay

Tejal Desai, engineer, California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research (QB3). Photo by Elisabeth Fall.