Bridging Biomedical Research Benefits of Interdisciplinary Research Age of divergence: Human Genome Project, Protein Structure Generated an excellent “parts list” Future Goal: Create the “Instruction Manual” Requires Convergence between Disciplines

Bridging Biomedical Research USC is Conducting Interdisciplinary Research Just two examples: Argus II – Artificial retina Neuro-engineering California Project to Cure Blindness – Stem cell therapy Cell engineering How Do we Foster Interdisciplinary Research ?

Bridging Biomedical Research Building Community in Interdisciplinary Research Computational Biology USC: first department (Molecular & Computational Biology) Microbiology Community Evolutionary science Infectious Disease New White House Initiative How do we expand & maintain what we build ?

Bridging Biomedical Research Investing in Interdisciplinary Research Translational Biomedical Imaging Laboratory Joint USC-CHLA Research accelerator Space, Equipment, Expertise $1.5 M first year cost Three year return on investment ~ 10-fold in grants Recruitment New research directions Expensive, but worth it

THE BRIDGE@USC Understand the Human Body, Improve the Human Condition A program within the Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience, Designed by Ray Stevens Today’s Examples (of ~400 life science research labs at USC) Scott Fraser – Imaging from the Tissue to the Cells Ray Stevens – Imaging from the Cell to the Molecules Carl Kesselman – Convergent Informatics

The Bridge@USC Faculty Today’s Examples (~400 life science research labs at USC) Scott Fraser – Imaging from the Tissue to the Cells Ray Stevens – Imaging from the Cell to the Molecules Carl Kesselman – Convergent Informatics

Imaging from the Organism/Tissue to the Cell Watching the Brain Learn A new way to label synapses, a new microscope, and new computer tools view every synapse in brain Fish that learn New Synapses Fish that don’t No new Synapses $9.7M Transformative NIH R01 Don Arnold, Scott Fraser, Carl Kesselman

Convergent Informatics: Synaptic Mapping Adapts to rapidly changing experimental parameters Analytic tools for detecting position of synapses in images Coordinate acquisition, organization and processing of large and diverse data types including imaging, behavioral, experimental parameters

Imaging from the Cell to the Molecules A Student’s Dream – Treat Multiple Sclerosis A neuromuscular disease treated using a human rheostat 3D molecular structure Science 335:851 (2012) Receptos founded 2009 Structure solved in 9 months IND filed November 2010 (from HTS hits) First human dose January, 2011 (Phase I) IPO May 2013 2 Phase III trials initiated 2014 (MS/IBD) Acquired by Celgene July 14, 2015

Open Source Industry-Academic GPCR $20M Consortium to USC and Los Angeles New International GPCR Consortium formed with Pharma and Academia to Advance Structural Information about G-protein Coupled Receptors   Los Angeles (USA) and Shanghai (China), Oct. 28. 2014 -- The generation of high-resolution pictures of hundreds of medically important proteins known as G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) will be the goal of an ambitious new international partnership. Called the GPCR Consortium, this non-profit initiative brings together major pharmaceutical companies and leading research institutes from three continents to advance GPCR research for drug development. The human body is controlled by 826 GPCRs, which are involved in a wide variety of human physiology and are implicated in many diseases. 10

Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience “Los Angeles should become to medical research what Silicon Valley is to information technology. We owe it to the world. We owe it to LA. We need to invest in this” Gary Michelson October 28, 2014 groundbreaking. Key faculty each providing core facilities and staff Biological Imaging EM - Ultrastructure Informatics Single Cell Screening Affinity reagents Nanofab