What Started The Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute

The Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute is a non-profit medical research institute with two locations in La Jolla, California and Lake Nona, Florida. The more than 750 scientists at Sanford-Burnham are focused on revealing the fundamental molecular causes of various diseases, with research including topics such as, cancer, neuroscience, stem cell research, diabetes and obesity.

Research at Sanford-Burnham is supported by funding from National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, and Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation among others, and partnerships with pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development.[1] In 2008, Burnham was awarded a .9 million grant by NIH to establish a high-throughput screening screening center.[2]

History

Former Burnham Institute for Medical Research logo

William (Bill) H. Fishman, M.D., Ph.D., and his wife Lillian Fishman, M.Ed., left Boston, Massachusetts, to found an independent research institution dedicated to the then-new concept of oncodevelopment in 1976.

The Fishmans, who had then retired from Tufts University School of Medicine, moved across the country and established the La Jolla Cancer Research Foundation in San Diego, California to conduct biomedical research. The institute was established in 1976 as the La Jolla Cancer Research Foundation, and was renamed the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in 1996 for businessman Malin Burnham, after he joined with an anonymous donor to give million. In 2007, T. Denny Sanford gave the institute million through his Sanford Health, allowing it to create the Sanford Children’s Health Research Center, which has sites in Sioux Falls and La Jolla, CA, the latter within the campus of Sanford-Burnham. In 2010, the institute re branded to its current name following a million pledge of support from Sanford. [3]

The center originally focused on oncodevelopment, the study of developmental biology in conjunction with oncology as a means to better understand cancer.

Research

Sanford-Burnham was founded with the primary focus on cancer research. The institute employees more than 1,000 people, of which 750 are scientists. The scientists who work at Sanford-Burnham include biologists, chemists, biophysicists, engineers, and computer scientists. Sanford-Burnham ranks consistently among the world’s top 25 organizations for its research impact, according to Thomson Scientific data. It also ranks among the top four research institutes in the United States in National Institutes of Health grant funding.

The institute now conducts a broad array of medical research activities and is home to five centers:

an NCI-designated Cancer Center;
the Del E. Webb Center for Neurosciences, Aging and Stem Cell Research];
the Infectious and Inflammatory Disease Center;
the Diabetes and Obesity Research Center;
and the Sanford Children’s Health Research Center.

In 2006, Sanford-Burnham established a center for bionanotechnology research at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The Vascular Mapping Center, led by medical researcher Dr. Erkki Ruoslahti, is focused on discovering peptides that target cancer cells and developing methods to deliver therapeutic agents to those cells.

Stem cell research

Sanford-Burnham is one of four institutes that have joined together to carry out stem cell research in a partnership renamed for T. Denny Sanford after he donated million to the effort in 2008. The Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine in December 2009 broke ground on a 6 million research facility following more than a year of financing delays wrought by California’s budget problems.

Select scientific achievements
1971: Eva Engvall, one of the scientists who invented ELISA in 1971, worked at Sanford-Burnham. She continues to serve as an Adjunct Professor.
1984: Discovered cell adhesion regulator RGD (Erkki Ruoslahti, M.D., Ph.D.)
1988: Collaborative discovery of the role TFG beta plays in tissue scarring. Based on this research, two clinical trials are underway: one for the treatment of pulmonary fibrosis and another for the treatment of renal cell carcinoma and melanoma (Erkki Ruoslahti, M.D., Ph.D.)
1992: Observed that the activity of common anti-cancer drugs requires “cell suicide” of the cancer cells (apoptosis) and subsequently discovered novel proteins important in apoptosis (John Reed, M.D., Ph.D.)
1997: Discovered peptides that home to specific organs. These peptides were later used as targeting elements to deliver nanoparticles into tumors and other sites of disease (Erkki Ruoshlahti, M.D., Ph.D.)
2001: Solved the 3-dimensional structure of the anthrax toxin, leading to the creation of the world’s most potent chemical inhibitor of anthrax (Robert Liddington, Ph.D.)
2009: Solved the crystal structure of the influenza hemagglutinin (H5) in complex with a broad spectrum neutralizing antibody (Robert Liddington, Ph.D.)
Collaboration and partnerships

Sanford-Burnham scientists routinely collaborate across disciplines and campuses. For example, Sanford-Burnham’s high-throughput screening center, the Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics, has robotics at both the La Jolla and Lake Nona campuses.

In addition, Sanford-Burnham has strong working relationships with a number of other organizations, including the University of California, San Diego, The Scripps Research Institute, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and Duke University’s Sarah W. Stedman Nutrition and Metabolism Center.

Sanford-Burnham also collaborates with pharmaceutical companies to move research breakthroughs from the lab out to the public. Recent agreements include partners such as Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development and Magellan Biosciences.

Training and education

Sanford-Burnham offers postdoctoral training for scientists who have completed their Ph.D. There are typically around 250 postdocs training at Burnham at any time.

Established in 2006, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Sanford-Burnham offers a Ph.D. degree in Molecular Medicine or Integrated Biosciences. The Graduate School trains students for careers in basic and translational research through a curriculum of focused, multi-disciplinary instruction. Sanford-Burnham is currently seeking accreditation with the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.

Sanford-Burnham also offers a joint graduate program with the University of California, San Diego in Molecular Pathology. [7]

References
^ “Burnham, Johnson & Johnson ink partnership”. http://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/stories/2009/01/12/daily16.html.
^ “Burnham Awarded .9 Million NIH Grant to Expand Small-Molecule Screening and Discovery Center”. http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1540494/burnham_awarded_979_million_nih_grant_to_expand_smallmolecule_screening/.
^ Burnham Institute Gets M Gifta and Changes Name, GenomeWeb, January 26, 2010
^ “Health Sciences Campus”. University of Central Florida College of Medicine. http://med.ucf.edu/about/campus/index.asp. Retrieved 2009-07-28.
^ Open Message to Floridians
^ Burnham’s Partners & Collaborators in Florida
^ “Molecular Pathology Ph.D. program”. http://molpath.ucsd.edu/.
^ Burnham Institute Gets M Gifta and Changes Name, GenomeWeb, January 26, 2010
^ Burnham Institute Gets M Gifta and Changes Name, GenomeWeb, January 26, 2010
^ Sanford-Burnham Promotes Vuori to President as Reed Focuses More on Externals, GenomeWeb, April 13, 2010
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