Chicago Biomedical Consortium
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.
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