Life Sciences
The University of Iowa’s reputation for comprehensive excellence in the life sciences follows, in great part, from the fact that Iowa researchers approach this many-pronged discipline from as many different angles. There’s research on the causes of human diseases, research that seeks new diagnostic techniques, new medicines, new medical devices, new ways of managing clinical practices. There’s research on basic biological phenomena and there’s companion research on ways in which the management of basic biological processes can help solve immediate industrial and environmental problems. There’s research relevant to farming and pharmaceuticals—research relevant to heart disease and to the environmental afflictions of the heartland.
Here’s a sampling of research in the life sciences at Iowa:
Research to improve human health-- the Carver College of Medicine
*Professor Gregory Hagemen co-leads an international research team that has discovered inherited variations in the Factor H gene that significantly increase the prospect of one developing age-related macular degeneration—or AMD—as she/he grows older. AMD is a sight limiting and sometimes blinding disease that affects some 50 million persons worldwide and about one-third of the US population over 75. Because there are few current therapeutic options for sufferers of AMD and because the newly reported genetic correlation may lead to new diagnostic approaches and medicines, the Director of the National Institutes of Health recently briefed Congress on this finding.
Above: Identified variations in the Factor H gene affect the production of unwanted drusen in the retina. The left image shows how even a single druse can destroy the retinal macula--leading to AMD. The companion stained image highlights cell nuclei. Inhibition of drusen formation might limit or end such destruction of the macula.
Research to improve industrial processes-- the College of Engineering
Tonya Peeples works with extremophiles. This doesn’t mean that her collaborators spend their free time hurtling down unmarked ski slopes and it doesn’t mean that the ability to execute a summersault off a skateboard ramp is a prerequisite for her classes in biochemical and chemical engineering . Peeples works with microbes that thrive in extreme environments—whether that extremity is defined by high temperatures, high pressures or high levels of acidity. In these cases, extremity is the mother of utility.
These extremophiles, these lovers of extremity, present certain advantages in solving difficult problems in industrial biotechnology. The microbes—or the enzymes they produce—effectively catalyze reactions that can help leach gold from ore; they catalyze reactions that can help break down and so neutralize otherwise recalcitrant environmental pollutants; and they catalyze reactions that destroy industrial wastes.
In November Peeples received the 2005 Distinguished Service Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Minority Affairs Committee.
The award was presented for "sustained service and outstanding achievements that advance the goals of the Minority Affairs Committee." Among those goals is reducing the under-representation of minorities in the chemical engineering profession, and engineering as a whole.Research on developmental biology: basic and applied—the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
UI professor David Soll maintains a set of labs with three research thrusts and oversees two research and service centers of national importance. He and the two dozen members of his group have attracted or generated $33 million in funding over the last two decades. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that he holds both the Emil Witschi/ Roy J. and Lucille Carver Chair in the Department of Biological Sciences. Soll’s lab—or labs—seek to discover the means by which selected microbes—particularly yeasts—become troublesome, disease-causing agents. In addition, Soll’s group works to better understand the biochemical basis for cellular motion, studies that not only illuminate basic biological phenomena but which also provide practical insights into human diseases such as metastatic cancers and AIDS. The third thrust of Soll’s group is to develop new computer-assisted technologies for dynamic cell reconstruction and motion analysis—technologies that have accelerated the first two initiatives.
Then there are the service centers. Under Soll’s directorship, the W.M. Keck Image Analysis Center offers those outside the group or outside the UI an opportunity to use imaging technologies the group has developed. The Developmental Studies Hybridoma Bank, run under the auspices of NIH, is a not-for profit center that maintains and distributes monoclonal antibodies for research throughout the world. The Bank filled close to 8000 requests in the past year. Indeed, it is fitting to say that Soll investigates not the life science but the life sciences.
Here are some additional facts that help define Iowa’s level of sustained excellence in the life sciences.
Selected Program Rankings:
|
|
Life Sciences at Iowa: Some Relevant FOAs—“Frequently Offered Answers”
- The Department of Otolaryngology is one of the oldest in the U.S. (1922) and one of the most comprehensive in the world.
- The Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering was one of the first chemical engineering programs in the United States (1905) and established one of the first U.S. degree programs in chemical and biochemical engineering (1989).
- The Department of Neurology is one of the three oldest in the country (1919) and its residency program one of the first to be accredited.
- The College of Dentistry is one of only a small number of dental schools in the United States with advanced programs in all recognized specialty areas. Every discipline has at least one national leader. The College also has the largest dental student research program in the nation.
- The psychology department is the seventh oldest in the country, and has been home to such eminent psychologists as Kenneth Spence, Albert Bandura, and Leon Festinger.