Chicago Biomedical Consortium

Building successful inter-institutional collaborations

Chicago Biomedical Consortiumwww.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

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Funding receivedfrom the SearleFunds at TheChicago CommunityTrust 2006-2014

Outside fundinggenerated by theCBC-fundedresearch 2006-2014*

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

Catalyst $200K 60 Catalysts awarded to date

Spark $400K 7 Sparks awarded to date

Recruitment $500K 6 Junior Faculty

INFRASTRUCTURE

Demo ProjectHTS

$20K 20 HTS Awards awarded to date

Postdoctoral Research Grant (PDR) $15K 55 PDR Awards awarded to date

Lever $2.5M 5 Levers awarded to date

Recruitment $1M 2 Senior Faculty

Infrastructure Awards $1M 3 awarded to date

CBC Award Programs

RESEARCH

Catalyst $200K 60 Catalysts awarded to date

Spark $400K 7 Sparks awarded to date

Recruitment $500K 6 Junior Faculty

INFRASTRUCTURE

Demo ProjectHTS

$20K 20 HTS Awards awarded to date

Postdoctoral Research Grant (PDR) $15K 55 PDR Awards awarded to date

Lever $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)

Synthetic Antibody Consortium

Conte Center on the Computational Systems Genomics of Psychiatric Disorders

Chicago Center for Nanomaterials for Cancer Diagnostics and Therapeutics

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 cross-institutional 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.