Endowed chair program awards $19 million for research

The board for the South Carolina Research Centers of Economic Excellence has awarded $19 million from legislative funding for the second year of its endowed chairs program.

Five million of the $19 million has been awarded to research programs at MUSC, which will provide investments in the people, laboratories and equipment needed to drive university research and development. In addition to bringing new federal and private funds into the state economy, these investments are expected to help startup and established businesses succeed. An additional $5 million from next year’s expected funding has been awarded to MUSC’s center for drug discovery in cancer.

“This year we had 20 proposals, and after the electronic reviews, we ended up with 13 proposals,” says Dr. Gail M. Morrison, director of academic affairs for the Commission on Higher Education. “The board was able to award $19 million [what was left from pre-approved awards from year one] provided by the state lottery funds.”

Each research university submits proposals requesting between $2 million and $5 million to be matched by private support. The institutions have one year to get pledges and five years to receive the money. “The money is not actually granted until the schools have received matching funds,” explains Morrison. “From the first year’s awards, Clemson has raised the match for its first automotive chair and USC has raised $500,000 for the nanocenter.”

Out of 20 proposals, MUSC was responsible for submitting five, primarily in collaboration with USC as well as the College of Charleston. The two that were nominated for funding were:

Translational Cancer Therapeutics Center of Economic Excellence is a project proposed in collaboration by MUSC and USC. Dr. Kenneth Tew, currently of the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, will chair the department of pharmacology at MUSC. Dr. Frank Berger, professor of biological sciences and director of the COBRE program in colon cancer, will lead the USC “arm” of the proposed project. The project will focus on development of new drugs and testing as well as the impact of gene misregulation and therapeutic agents on tumor development.

MUSC’s Dr. Rick Schnellmann, professor and chair of pharmaceutical sciences and Dr. Yusuf Hannun, professor and chair of biochemistry and molecular biology, will partner with Dr. John Baynes, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at USC, to form the Center for Drug Discovery in Cancer. The center will develop research in the following areas: structural biology for target analysis, chemical biology for designing drug candidates, and advanced biomedical screening technologies.

Dr. Raymond Greenberg, president of MUSC, believes the chairs will bring into the state “scientists of national standing, who will bring their research programs and contribute through building their research and intellectual property. We can use their research for stimulus for economic patenting, licensing, commercial application, royalties, creation of startup companies and the expansion of knowledge based economy.”

Researchers have to submit to a two-tiered review process in which their proposal is first sent to at least three peer reviews, with prominent scientists in the perspective fields hired from federal agencies and research institutes around the country to rate the proposals based on scientific merit. The second level is an onsite review by panelists whose primary purpose is to look at each proposal from an economic impact standpoint.

The reviewers judge whether the proposal has an appropriate plan for implementation and whether the person identified for the endowed chair is a suitable candidate, says Morrison. “Does it look like it will have a positive impact on the economy? Will it lead to job creation within five to 10 years, or to improved programs for graduate students? Will it have practical applications or lead to commercialization within five to ten years? Will it enhance the intellectual capital of the state?”

Bobby Pearce, one of 12 members of the appointed review board for the Research Centers of Excellence and an attorney with Nelson, Mullins, Riley and Scarborough, is adamant that collaboration is the key to making the endowed chairs program advantageous for the state. “Nationally, South Carolina comes in 49th or 50th in every ranking,” he points out. “We can’t go any further in economic development without taking our state into the top tier.

“In order to achieve that, we have got to come together as a state and use the resources at each of these three research universities so that we’re not duplicating resources—and so that we’re feeding off each other’s work and the brilliant minds that are already here,” Pearce adds. “This could go a long way toward keeping the best and brightest from leaving the state instead of letting them go to Charlotte or Atlanta.”

Although the legislation calls for collaborative proposals, it is not a requirement—an issue that will bear some experimentation in weighing the merits of the various research projects. “The review board has expressed several times over that it wishes to see collaborative proposals. The guidelines calls for collaboration, but it’s an area that we need to spend some time discussing,” says Morrison.

Cooperative work between different institutions is intended to receive extra points from the review board. For instance, everything MUSC submitted is collaborative, according to Greenberg. “One included College of Charleston, and another includes MUSC, USC and Clemson. The rest are two-way collaborations with USC, such as the fuel cell and tourism proposals.”

The most recent collaborative effort of the private sector with research universities has been the International Center for Automotive Research at Clemson. Its strength lies in the good partnership with BMW, but its downside is that it was not submitted in collaboration with the other universities.

“The great benefit of collaboration in the research arena is that our three research universities are fairly small and are therefore not particularly competitive individually,” says Morrison. “If they can collaborate and leverage their collective resource, together they become much more impressive.”

Pearce agrees that the results are already measurably improved.

“We’ve only had one full year and at MUSC they’re already making great headway in regenerative medicine,” he says. “The stem cell research has the ability to regenerate organ tissue rather than relying on a donor. It has enormous implications from a humanitarian standpoint and is attracting a lot of attention to the state.”