The economy recession is most likely over, says who?

The economy recession is most likely over, or so says the federal reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. Do you feel it? Are you seeing increased job opportunities when you leave your current lab or security if you have a post-postdoc position? In our industry, where the health of the economy is mostly measured by research budgets of individual labs or research groups, occasionally by budgets for contracting or licensing fees, the change, if any, is still hard-to-find. But hiring at academic institutes like UCSD seems to have picked up lately, probably due to addition grants from the Obama administration’s stimulus programs. At the same time, individual NIH R1 grants have been creeping up to easily around 1 million a year, program grants 3-5 millions. With more stimulus money kicking in to academic labs this fall, it is expected that the situation will further improve. Comments welcome.

Notes about recent jobs in Pharma/Biotech: since our last blog about massive Pfizer layoff of scientists in 02-09-09, a major layoff in the big pharma sector came from Merck, which announced on 06-11-09 that it would cut 16,000 jobs after completing its merger with Shering Plough. On 09-14-09, Eli Lilly reported job cots of 5,500 or roughly 14% of its work force. There are areas in the country where people report about the economy as “I went to 2 grocery stores and 3 discount department stores over one weekend, and you could do cannon shooting practice in there without hitting a person.” Again comments welcome here, if you believe in a turnaround, or it is all doom and gloom to you. Btw, the History channel has been cranking up the 2012 theories for a couple of months now, if you like the doom and gloom theories.

Note added in proof: As reported in Science yesterday, “a new analysis of the grantsmaking process at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) lifts the veil on how many grant proposals are funded even though they fall below a cutoff based on peer-review scores…at least 19% of NIH’s basic research portfolio is funded for reasons that go beyond quality.”

Francis Collins On the Job

Dr. Collins did a town hall meeting style announcement his first day as NIH Director on Aug 17th, 2009. He laid out his view for the NIH: more funding (good), encouraging young scientists (good, average age for first own funding for US biologist is 42, not good), and staying open in communication with society it is serving.

The NIH has $30.9 billion budget for 09 and 2010 thanks to the stimulus addition of $10 billion/year. However, it will feel dried up after two years if the budget plan remains as is. The Obama administration does not seem to want increase the basic research but instead focus more on health care management.

Collins is a well admired director and established scientist. However, it may be a little concerning that he might be too much into “big science” and organized efforts. I don’t know what they teach in graduate classes now but from what I was told 20 years ago curiosity-driven science is the best science and that was what got the US to the dominant leadership in biomedical fields.

Talking about nurturing young scientists, big programs and big labs controlling most grants by proposing big science seem trendy these days. The fight to become one of the big guys in a small, crowded field is a really daunting path for young researchers to tread. The big guys have the say from publication to funding and often times the unpleasant thought and bitter taste of competing against a scientific juggernaut turn young researchers away.

Tags: big research, Dr. Francis Collins, NIH budget, NIH director, Obama's research policy, young researchers in US

Stimulus money at work in labs now

Since signing into law in February, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009’s ~10 billion dollar extra funding to the National Institutes of Health has resulted in funding 2,346 projects (or as supplements) so far. There have been several rounds of additional grant applications including the “Challenge” and the “Grant Opportunity” or GO grants, the funding of which will start in the fall. So, if you think you are seeing the leaves on the tree moving, maybe there is a breeze. Better proof for improvement, at least of the mood, of course would be the fact that your PI’s less stiff-looking face when you put in a request for purchasing reagents.

Buzz has it that right now is the hardest time for a postpoc to move on, even though it does not feel that great staying beyond a typical few years in the current lab either. Remember, job market recovery is a delayed action part of any economic recovery. So hold on tight and look ahead.

Companies in the research supply industry, large or small, are inevitably suffering along side with academic labs as well as the drug-aiming biotech industry and R&D centers of pharmaceuticals. Invitrogen (Life Technologies) let go of people in several rounds already. Specialty companies like Glen Research, leading supplier of oligo chemicals, are also shedding employees, it seems. Allele Biotech has not and is not planning to lay off team members, but we have not been able to replace people who recently left or support part-time employees’ level of work as we wanted to.

The ARRA stimulus money through NIH will be a main life line for many of us doing biomedical research in the next few months to a couple of years, depending on how Wall Street and the capital market shape up. The number of grants and total dollars will increase, however slowly it feels. No time to pop the cord yet but at least you can plan on doing that next experiment to get the paper published sooner rather than later, perhaps buying your genotyping kits and miniprep columns from us!

Don’t overlook the deep meaning of Independence Day. Enjoy the day and celebrate our freedom. Happy Independence Day.

Tags: bench work, biomedical job, budget, experiments, funding, graduate students, grants, independence day, July 4th, lower price, NIH, postdoc, researchers, SBIR, wet lab

Time to renew the SBIR law and the fight is on again.

The following information is courtesy of Rick Shindell
at SBIR Gateway, we post this excerpt to here to help more people who may be concerned to become aware of the situation.

The four House bills were marked up and approved on June 11, 2009 by the House Small Business Committee’s Subcommittee on Contracting and Technology and should go to the full SBC committee next week. The Senate bill is scheduled for markup June 18, 2009.

SENATE SBIR/STTR REAUTHORIZATION BILL S.1233 The Senate’s SBIR reauthorization bill was introduced June 10, 2009 and sponsored by SBE committee chair, Mary Landrieu (D-LA), and ranking member Olympia Snowe (R-ME).

At the time of this writing the bill was not yet available from the government printing office, so we can’t give you a link to it. We can provide you with an overview. It is close to but not exactly the same as last year.

Important points include:
* Extension of termination dates – 2023 (14 years)
* Improvements to strengthening the SBA Office of Technology
* Increase SBIR allocation by 0.1% per year (starting in FY-2011) until reaching 3.5% in FY-2020
* Increase STTR allocation to .4% for FY-2011; .5% for FY-2013; 0.6% for FY-2015
* Increase SBIR/STTR award levels to $150k phase I and $1M for phase II
* Awards shall not exceed 50% above recommended award levels
* Elimination of Phase II “invitation” process (i.e., DoD)
* VC small biz eligibility compromise limited to 18% of NIH SBIR Award funding, 8% at the other 10 agencies
* Allow small business to partner with federal labs or FFRDC without requiring a wavier from SBA
* Reinstate State and Rural outreach programs
* SBIR STEM Workforce Development Grant Pilot Program
* Continuation of Commercialization Pilot Program (DoD)
* Establish Commercialization Pilot Program for civilian agencies
* Nanotechnology Initiative
* Accelerating Cures – NIH Pilot
* Accuracy In Funding Base Calculations (keep em honest in the 2.5% extramural calculations)
* Increase in technical assistance from $4k to $5k
* SBIR and STTR Special Acquisition Preference

It is highly recommended that if you like the basis of this bill, contact your Senators and ask them to cosponsor this legislation, (S.1233 – A bill to reauthorize and improve the SBIR and STTR programs and for other purposes). This is very important if you want the Senate version to stand a chance on passing.

A tidbit you might have already known, the Challenge Grant through NIH’s ARRA stimulus program received 20k applications for some 200 to 400 awards.

The NIH stimulus grants do not have the SBIR obligations by a last minute change. How may all these affect Allele’s operations? We have submitted 3 grants to the NIH in the last 3 months, with total 4 now pending. It means that we sure are interested in NIH funding, which was, after all, how our company was started. On the other hand, we are also glad that we do have ongoing sales and services that link us directly to users of our technologies. In the current difficult economy and tight funding environment, we strive to be a company that supplies most essential biological research tools that could save average labs some 20-50% cost per item compared to buying from companies like Life Technologies and Clontech, etc. At the same time, we want to provide the convenience to our customers by covering a sufficient number of common reagent areas, a value small specialty companies normally do not offer. See our next blog for more comments on being a flexible and able provider of everything essential.

Tags: ARRA, GO grant, lab budget, lower costs, NIH challenge grant, NIH funding, research grants, research tools, SBIR

Meeting with Congresswoman Susan Davis’ Staff on Small Business Grants

Allele Biotech’s CEO Jiwu Wang participated in a meeting between a local biotech business organization “SBIR San Diego” and a representative of local Congresswoman Susan Davis. We had the opportunity to explain our positions on government funding for small business, particularly in the biotech area. We want to see that the SBIR law be extended in its form that is most aligned with its original intention of helping small business innovative research that would not have been otherwise possible.

As one of the participating SBIR members who told each company’s own “story”, Dr. Wang described that Allele Biotech was founded by 5 SBIR grants in 99 when he was still a postdoc at UCSD. Dr. The grants helped the company make its first product and deal by securing patent positions in one of most important research fields in the last decade, RNAi, and out-licensing the rights to Promega. Allele Biotech has since developed its own marketing and sales force, reinvested in formulating viral based RNAi with state-of-the-art fluorescent markers. Allele is currently waiting to start a phase II SBIR project for the NCI on cancer diagnostics.

Coinciding with President Obama’s announcement of federal programs to help small business today, the meeting had an overtone reflecting the general mood about economy’s direction in the nation. Like many research-oriented biotech companies, Allele’s scientists plan to apply for the Stimulus funds through the NIH’s Challenge Grants, in the areas of induced stem cells (iPS) and cancer stem calls (CSCs), which are Allele’s next new product line focus.

Tags: biotech, Challenge Grants, innovative research, NIH grants, San Diego, sba, SBIR, small business, stimulus package, Susan Davis