Chicago Biomedical Consortium
Building successful
inter-institutional
collaborations
Chicago Biomedical Consortium
www.chicagobiomedicalconsortium.org
CBC is funded by the Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust
Mission
The mission of the Chicago Biomedical Consortium is to stimulate collaboration among scientists at
Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Chicago that will
transform research at the frontiers of biomedicine. The CBC works to:
 Stimulate research and education that bridge institutional boundaries.
 Enable collaborative and interdisciplinary research that is beyond the range of a single
institution.
 Recruit and retain a strong cadre of biomedical leaders and researchers in Chicago.
 Promote the development of the biomedical industry in Chicago.
 Execute a plan capable of improving the health of citizens of Chicago and beyond.
History
 CBC got started after Dan Searle suggested that the three universities devise
a way to collaborate and to ‘put Chicago on the map.’
 Focus groups of faculty started meeting in early 2002.
 A “Demonstration Project” was proposed in 2003 and funded ($1.5M) in 2004.
University Provosts each committed $150K, and agreed to waive indirect cost
recovery on any CBC grants from the Searle Funds at The Chicago
Community Trust (SFCCT). High-end mass spec instruments for proteomics
were acquired and sited at UIC.
 Based on the success of the Demonstration Project, in 2006 the SFCCT
approved full operational funding, at $5M per year. Original term was for five
years (2006 through 2010), then extended for an additional five years (2011
through 2015).
Organization
Accomplishments
 CBC has made 157 awards to almost 300 investigators. All awards have been
subject to merit review.
 CBC funding has helped recruit 8 faculty members to participating universities.
 CBC Lever matching funds have helped CBC universities win six multi-million
dollar center grants.
 CBC-seeded research findings have been published in over 1,000 papers.
 CBC-funded research has generated 12 patent applications, 6 patents, and
4 local start-up companies.
 CBC has built a wide-ranging culture of collaboration between the universities,
starting with faculty scientists and provosts, and now extending through Research
Administration, core facilities management, Tech Transfer Offices, and even
Development Offices.
Leverage
As a result of $31.9M funding (96 projects) from the CBC:
 Several hundred research workers supported
 $348M in subsequent grant funding
 Economic Impact on Chicago of ~ $1 billion
Cumulative Leverage 2006-2014*
CBC Economic Impact on Chicago
2006-2014*
(*As of July 31, 2014)
400
(*As of July 31, 2014)
347.5
300
Funding received
from the Searle
Funds at The
Chicago Community
Trust 2006-2014
275
$ Million
250
214
200
161
150
118
100
50
0
65
45
Outside funding
generated by the
CBC-funded
research 2006-2014*
1,301
1400
1200
954
1000
$ Million
350
954
800
600
347.5
400
200
30
45
347.5
0
Support
CBC
Economic
Total
from
Cumulative Impact
Economic
SFCCT
Leverage
Input
Website
Central resource for the CBC community:
 Up-to-date information about CBC
award programs and CBC events
 One stop shop for:

citywide events relevant to
biomedical research; 1,400+
events publicized to date

online tools to find collaborators
in Chicago

information about research
facilities and resources available
to Chicagoland researchers
> 52,700 unique visitors have viewed a total of
> 281,000 webpages.
www.chicagobiomedicalconsortium.org
CBC Award Programs
RESEARCH
INFRASTRUCTURE
Catalyst
Demo Project
 $200K
 60 Catalysts awarded to date
Spark
 $400K
 7 Sparks awarded to date
HTS
 $20K
 20 HTS Awards awarded to date
Postdoctoral Research Grant (PDR)
 $15K
 55 PDR Awards awarded to date
Lever
Recruitment
 $500K
 6 Junior Faculty
 $2.5M
 5 Levers awarded to date
Recruitment
 $1M
 2 Senior Faculty
Infrastructure Awards
 $1M
 3 awarded to date
CBC Award Programs
RESEARCH
INFRASTRUCTURE
Catalyst
Demo Project
 $200K
 60 Catalysts awarded to date
Spark
 $400K
 7 Sparks awarded to date
HTS
 $20K
 20 HTS Awards awarded to date
Postdoctoral Research Grant (PDR)
 $15K
 55 PDR Awards awarded to date
Lever
Recruitment
 $500K
 6 Junior Faculty
 $2.5M
 5 Levers awarded to date
Recruitment
 $1M
 2 Senior Faculty
Infrastructure Awards
 $1M
 3 awarded to date
Building and Supporting Infrastructure
Chicago Center for Systems Biology (CCSB)
Chicago Tri-institutional Center for Methods and Library
Development (CTCMLD)
Chicago Center for Nanomaterials for Cancer
Diagnostics and Therapeutics
Synthetic Antibody Consortium
Conte Center on the Computational Systems
Genomics of Psychiatric Disorders
Center for Advanced Molecular Imaging
Small Molecule Screening Facilities
Hitachi HD-2300A STEM
Mass spectrometry Metabolomics and Proteomics
Facility
Proteomics Center of Excellence
CBC Infrastructure Awards
Promoting use of Core Facilities
 High-Throughput Screening Supplemental Grants
(notable for involvement of Core facility Directors in application prep
and review)
 Post-doctoral Research Grants
(Core Facility Directors participate in application)
Linking Resources
Core Facilities Directory
~100 facilities listed
Huron Feasibility Study
Huron Feasibility Study
Open Access Initiative
Open Access Initiative
 The pioneering memorandum of understanding (MOU) allows
researchers from the three schools access to a partner’s
instrumentation and expertise at no additional charge for an outside
user (facilities and administration costs).
 With the Open Access Initiative, research teams will have more dollars for
experiments, since they won’t have to pay for indirect costs when using a
partner’s facility.
 The long-term strength of the pact is to give researchers more choices of
facilities right in the Chicago area. Faculty, postdoctoral fellows and
graduate students already are taking advantage of resources located at the
partner institutions, with no campus more than an hour’s drive away.
Infrastructure Award
 Universities challenged to expand core facilities in a cooperative fashion, building on the
Open Access Initiative
 Each university offered up to $1M for a high-end, state-of-the-art research instrument to be
located in a core facility and available to the CBC community
 Universities required to work together in an unprecedented fashion to identify unique
instruments with broad user bases
 CBC recently approved three $1 million awards for:

The establishment of a new Single Cell Analysis Core at UIC, with capabilities for
both proteomics and genomics analysis

FEI Talos 200 C TEM, to be used as a “feeder” cryo-transmission electron
microscope, to be housed at UChicago

GATAN K2 Summit Camera, which will greatly increase the functionality of the
existing CryoEM at NU

The UChicago and NU instruments will, together, form a new Multi-Institutional
Center of Excellence in CryoEM, unequaled in the Midwest.
Some defining elements of the CBC enterprise
 Bottom-up, not top-down organization
 Embedded within the three member universities, not established as
a separate entity
 Equal representation from all institutions in decision-making, but no
requirement or expectation of equal division of funds
 Strong commitment to scientific merit and peer review
 Generous, consistent, flexible support from the Searle Funds at The
Chicago Community Trust
Lessons Learned
 Collaboration takes sustained commitment and effort. In the words of Susan
Lindquist, one of the CBC External Advisory Board members: “Lip service to crossinstitutional collaboration is common; the real thing is very rare indeed.”
 Given sustained commitment and effort, cross-institutional collaboration can
indeed take root and flower, with far-reaching consequences and substantial
benefits to all participants.