Rare is the Alaskan who hasn’t occasionally dreamed of hibernating through winter. A kindred spirit, of sorts, has given rise to a biomedical discovery that UAF scientists say has the potential to significantly improve medical treatment for humans and has contributed to a resurgence of biomedical research at UAF.

Alaska’s arctic ground squirrel hibernates through the North’s notorious winters by reducing its body temperature below the freezing point of water, reducing its consumption of energy, and lowering its metabolism, blood flow and heart rate to a state called torpor. Each spring it reverses the process and awakens unscathed. When humans have similar reductions in blood flow to the brain, it’s called a stroke. Humans rarely fare as well as squirrels. From the moment a stroke begins, brain cells are starved of oxygen and nutrients and begin to die.

Neurobiologist Kelly Drew, one of a growing cadre of biomedical researchers at UAF, is investigating whether the protection that hibernation affords a ground squirrel can be replicated in people.

“If scientists can figure out how to induce hibernation-like biological processes in stroke patients, then it’s possible that a pill or an injection could enable the human body to mimic what ground squirrels do during hibernation,” says Drew, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry and associate director representing biomedical and behavioral health research at UAF’s Institute of Arctic Biology.

Medical personnel could administer drugs to minimize brain damage during, or immediately after, a stroke. Induced hibernation might also mean injured soldiers or people without ready access to medical treatment, such as Alaskans who live off the road system, could survive traumatic medical events with fewer long-term injuries.

“We want to advance hibernation research to the point where it pays off in a product or therapy that can increase survivorship of traumatic injury and disease in Alaska and everywhere else,” says Brian Barnes, IAB director and a zoophysiologist who studies the genomics of hibernation in squirrels and bears.

Most scientists believe that a fundamental understanding of science—basic research—is needed in order for progress to take place. Basic research is what lays the foundation for the applied science that follows. According to George Smoot, 2006 Nobel laureate in physics, “If we only did applied research, we would still be making better spears.”1

“What we’re doing at UAF is basic science using animal models to understand the mechanisms of disease, which eventually get translated into therapeutic approaches for people,” says Lawrence Duffy, interim dean of the UAF graduate school and program
director of the Alaska Basic Neuroscience Program.

Biomedical research benefits Alaskans

While application of hibernation-like suspended animation to humans is likely years away, university-supported biomedical research provides Alaskans with the immediate benefits of student education, training and preprofessional preparation in health-related fields such as medical assistants, technicians, therapists and dental assistants.
 
“Creating both intellectual and physical biomedical infrastructure at the university will facilitate training students for biomedical expertise in the community at all levels,” Drew says. “Every time you send students interested in biomedicine outside Alaska for training, you risk them not coming back.”
A thriving biomedical research program ensures that it is the premier research scientists who are educating and training these students.

The demand for health-care workers is expected to grow faster than any other employment sector during the next decade and about 15 percent of Alaska’s workforce will be employed in the health-care sector by 2010, according to the 2004 “Health Research in Alaska” report by the University of Alaska.2
“Students who live and learn in the kind of academic biomedical culture UAF is developing are more eligible and competitive for entry into medical and veterinary schools,” says Drew. For students not initially interested in bioscience, this new culture provides an opportunity to experience and explore biomedicine as a career.

“If we’re not growing our own scientists and health professionals, we have to hire them from Outside,” says Barnes. “UAF’s biomedical research programs offer undergraduate students incredible opportunities for hands-on experience tackling scientific questions that affect Alaskans.”
 
Circles of success

“The circle begins with the investment of start-up funding for biomedical infrastructure at the university level to build laboratories and teaching spaces in which scientists can begin to create a sustainable biomedical research and teaching program,” Drew says.

Research is considered the supply side of medical and scientific innovation and bioscience industries are rooted in research and development. More than 1.2 million people in the United States are currently employed in biosciences and the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that figure will grow at an annual rate 13 percent greater than the rate of overall employment.3

While the return on this investment in basic research may not be apparent for years, says Drew, “It will pay off. A really good example is Texas; they turned their oil wealth into a great biomedical infrastructure.

“With proper facilities and financial support from university administrators, scientists can attract undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and collaborators with whom they can design research projects and build an intellectual infrastructure,” Drew says.

UAF scientists are doing their part by successfully competing for biomedical infrastructure programs.

Alaska Basic Neuroscience Program

The Alaska Basic Neuroscience Program was the first UAF biomedical program to be funded. “We got the best score in the [NIH] program,” said Drew, an ABNP researcher and founding member. The goal of the program is to expand and stimulate basic neuroscience research at UAF by focusing on neuroprotection and adaptation at the cellular and molecular level.

In addition to Drew’s work with squirrels, ABNP researcher Abel Bult-Ito studies Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in mice. OCD is linked to circadian rhythms which are influenced by the dramatic light and dark cycles of life in the Arctic. ABNP neurobiologists Michael Harris and Barbara Taylor use animal models to study the neural control of breathing and breathing disorders such as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, which has a disproportionately high incidence in Alaska and among Alaska Natives
.
ABNP is supported by a competitive Specialized Neuroscience Research Program grant from the NIH through the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Center for Research Resources.

“Cultural diversity is good for science,” says Drew. “We have access to tremendous cultural wealth in Alaska and by bringing the science to Alaska we access this wealth.” Duffy has been a driving force to bring Alaska Natives into this program as students and as research liaisons, says Drew.

Center for Alaska Native Health Research

The Center for Alaska Native Health Research (CANHR), part of the Institute of Arctic Biology, was established in 2001 with an $11 million grant from NIH to investigate weight, nutrition and health in Alaska Natives from a genetic, dietary, and cultural-behavioral perspective. For more on CANHR, see the article The Science of Obesity.

Alaska IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence

Alaska INBRE is an NIH-sponsored program that seeks to build biomedical research by supporting promising new biomedical faculty members, providing access to biomedical resources for faculty and students, and recruiting students into biomedical research careers.

“Alaska presents special opportunities and challenges and needs to be a key participant in development of new biomedical knowledge and in applying new research insights to our local needs,” says George Happ, INBRE director.

INBRE focuses on diseases that originate in nature. The organization’s research includes molecular toxicology of subsistence species such as wildlife and fish species that form the traditional food base for Native Alaskans, and zoonotic diseases caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites, which can pass between humans and animals. “Our Alaska INBRE program aims to strengthen university capacities at the interface between wildlife and environmental research and human health,” Happ says.

ABNP, CANHR and AK-INBRE each address the goal put forth in UA’s “Health Research in Alaska” report to “… develop broad, interactive, self-sustaining programs of major intellectual stature that utilize the special situations, people, and natural research models in Alaska and address research priorities that are highly important to its people.”

“The success of these programs makes us more competitive for additional research dollars,” Drew says. “I saw this at the places I went to school – I know it works.”

Financial support of biomedical research

Alaska’s research enterprise depends on federal and state support. “Biomedicine is the one growth area in federal research funding,” says Happ. “There is almost $30 billion in NIH funding, of which Alaska won less than $10 million in 2005, up from less than $1 million in 1999. NIH grants have enormous, largely untapped potential for Alaska’s biomedical research programs and for addressing topics that are health concerns in Alaska.”

The leading source of grants for biomedical research in the United States is the National Institutes of Health. The NIH R-series research grants are awarded by competitive merit reviews of proposals written by independent investigators. Of these awards, the R01 grants are considered the “gold standard”. In September 2007, UAF geneticist and CANHR co-director Bert Boyer was awarded a $2.8 million R01 grant to study the genetics of obesity in Alaska Natives. Boyer attributes his success, in part, to the support he received from CANHR, which is funded by a NIH biomedical infrastructure grant and receives support from UAF’s Institute of Arctic Biology.

Alaska needs sophisticated instrumentation, properly serviced laboratories, large computational capacity, and broad-band connectivity between sites in Alaska and to the rest of the world. CANHR, INBRE, and ABNP are starting to address these needs. While infrastructure grants can help Alaska build research capacity, says Drew, “we have a long way to go to become self-sustaining; we need more financial support for research facilities and trained personnel.”

UAF grant awards in biomedical science have exceeded $65 million4 since fiscal year 2002.5 This investment has led to extraordinary increases in research activity, hiring of new faculty and expansion of programs. The proposed BIOS building at UAF will provide much-needed research facilities which integrate student and faculty research in ways that foster a productive intellectual research climate.

Biotechnology and community jobs

The United States is the global leader in knowledge creation, but to remain competitive there must be support for research to train the next generation of leaders in science. When research and education funding stalls, the U.S. risks losing students and scientists to other careers and other countries.

“To provide service to the public, the academic community and biomedical culture must be self-sustaining,” Drew says. “And research is the industry that can make it self-sustaining.”

In a knowledge-based economy, research offers better health and higher-paying jobs and three-fourths of Americans say it is important to create careers in science and research for young people, according to the nonprofit education alliance Research!America.6

“We need to train people to do research at all levels,” Drew says. “This is one of our problems; we can’t hire research technicians off the street who know how to do what we need done in the lab. We don’t yet have the critical mass of trained people.”

Biomedical infrastructure at the university will facilitate training of students for biomedical expertise in the community at all levels. “The only way Alaskans are going to get people to work on problems of interest to them is to get Alaskans to do the science,” says Duffy.

“In terms of biomedicine, much of what becomes a new treatment or drug has its foundations in the kinds of basic biomedical research being done at UAF,” says Barnes.

Self-sustaining research in biomedicine can also dovetail into biotechnology. “You train the members of your community in biomedical science and they’re the ones who will develop biotechnologies and local biotech businesses; people who’ve lived in Alaska generally want to stay,” Drew says.

References:

1. Smoot: http://lbl.gov/Education/ELSI/Frames/research-basic-defined-f.html

2. Health Research in Alaska : http://healthresearch.infoinsights.com/documents/Health_Plan_for_Alaska.pdf

3. Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.battelle.org/news/06/04-10-06BIO.stm

4. ABNP I $7,808,565; ABNP II $6,334,401; BRIN $8.751,468; INBRE $17,561,813; COBRE I $11,158, 957; COBRE II $10,998,857; Boyer RO1 $2,800,000 = $65,414,061

5. UAF grant awards, BIOS: http://www.uaf.edu/lifescience/research/index.xml

6. Research!America: http://www.researchamerica.org/

URLs:

AK-SNRP: http://mercury.bio.uaf.edu/abnp/home.htm

AK-INBRE: www.inbre.alaska.edu

CANHR: http://canhr.uaf.edu

IAB: www.iab.uaf.edu

UAF: www.uaf.edu

People:

Kelly Drew, ffkld@uaf.edu - Associate professor, Institute of Arctic Biology, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Alaska Specialized Neuroscience Research Program; deputy director of biomedicine and behavioral health IAB, UAF.

Brian Barnes, ffbmb@uaf.edu - Professor, Institute of Arctic Biology, Department of Biology and Wildlife; director Institute of Arctic Biology, UAF.

Lawrence Duffy, fflkd@uaf.edu - Professor, Institute of Arctic Biology, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; interim dean graduate school, UAF

George Happ, george.happ@alaska.edu - Research professor, Institute of Arctic
Biology; IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence director, UAF

Bert Boyer, bert.boyer@uaf.edu - Associate professor, Institute of Arctic Biology, Department of Biology and Wildlife; co-director Center for Alaska Native Health Research, UAF.

Abel Bult-Ito, ffab@uaf.edu - Associate professor, Institute of Arctic Biology, Department of Biology and Wildlife, Alaska Specialized Neuroscience Research Program, UAF.

Michael Harris, ffmbh@uaf.edu - Assistant professor, Institute of Arctic Biology, Department of Biology and Wildlife, Alaska Specialized Neuroscience Research Program, UAF.

Barbara Taylor, ffbet@uaf.edu - Assistant professor, Institute of Arctic Biology, Department of Biology and Wildlife, Alaska Specialized Neuroscience Research Program, UAF.

next article: The cold facts of warm permafrost ...