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May 30, 2008

SDSU Innovation Campus: Epicenter for entrepreneurship, innovation, and collaboration

BROOKINGS, S.D. — On land where SDSU used to plant wheat and soybeans for crop experiments, the footings of the South Dakota State University Innovation Campus are taking root.

And the returns won't be harvested in bushels per acre, but in jobs created, new companies launched, and new collaborations between business, industry, university and government.

Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director Teresa McKnight said that's the idea behind the SDSU Innovation Campus. It's a place designed to help university researchers to transfer technology from the university to private industry and government partners in order to bring those ideas to the marketplace.

“When you look at the creation of new companies, both national and international, and if you look back to where these companies originated, you will find most of the companies originated from a researcher in an academic environment,” McKnight said.

Contractors broke ground Nov. 15, 2007, on a 30,000-square-foot incubator and multitenant building as the first structure on the Innovation Campus. Phase 2 of that project, in the future, will add another 30,000 square feet to that facility, for a total of 60,000 square feet.

Meanwhile, plans are proceeding to install infrastructure – roads, curb, gutter, sidewalk, and utilities. By fall of 2008 or early spring of 2009, construction is to begin on a separate Seed Technology Building near the junction of 22nd Avenue and the U.S. Highway 14 Bypass. It will have office and lab space totaling approximately 36,000 square feet.

McKnight said there's a natural synergy that results when companies locate close to universities. It makes it easier for companies to work with researchers to test their own ideas, or in some cases, to commercialize university scientists' ideas.

“These companies want to be attached or want to locate next door to the academic environment because they want to be next door to these researchers. They also want to employ the best and brightest undergraduate and graduate students within the university,” McKnight said.

McKnight noted that university-related research parks also offer companies the same sort of synergy from “clustering” companies together — placing biotechnology, engineering, software and hardware companies close to each other, for example.

The benefits of University-related research parks are not just for new start-up companies. There are times when it makes sense for an existing, well-established company to locate within a research park.

What might be ahead for the SDSU Innovation Campus? McKnight has a sense of that from her previous job working at an established university-related research park at Utah State University.

“Utah State created a park in the mid 1980s. Thirty-eight acres of state-owned property was set aside to develop the research park. When I left in December of 2006, I had only 2 acres of the 38 acres left to develop, so we purchased additional property to expand from 38 acres to 173 acres.”

At that time in late 2006, McKnight said, the research park had 48 companies that employed 2,103 employees, and 980 of those employees were Utah State University students. In 2006, those companies' revenues totaled $132 million.

“In the state of Utah they use a multiplier of three. In other words, if those companies brought in $132 million, they put $396 million back into Utah's economy,” McKnight said. “University-related research parks have a powerful impact in state economies.”

Learn more about the SDSU Innovation Campus at its Web site, www.sdstate.edu/innovationcampus .

May 23, 2008

SDSU research: New tools against skin cancer

BROOKINGS, S.D. — There's something new under the sun at South Dakota State University: Researchers are working with molecules that protect against skin cancer and may even help undo the sun's damage.

Distinguished professor Chandradhar Dwivedi, head of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Department in the College of Pharmacy at SDSU, said the work could be commercialized within 10 years.

“We are looking at a number of molecules that can be used with sunscreen or without sunscreen. They are not simply blocking the radiation, but they are reversing the damage caused by radiation,” Dwivedi said.

Exposure to ultraviolet light, especially in summertime, can contribute to skin cancer. Farmers and others who spend long hours exposed to sunlight are among those most at risk.

People are becoming more aware of the risk of skin cancer thanks to educational efforts. More people are wearing sunscreens, though Dwivedi cautioned that sunscreens must be re-applied at regular intervals to provide optimum protection.

“We have been saying for a long time that prevention is the best medicine. We have to make the effort to prevent the disease before we treat it,” Dwivedi said.

Nevertheless, some new strategies are emerging that could make sunscreens and lotions even more effective against skin cancer. Here's a look at SDSU's involvement:

— Alpha-santalol is the name of a molecule that is one of the main components of oil of sandalwood. Dwivedi has made alpha-santalol a focus of his research for nearly 15 years.

“This product has been very effective in preventing skin cancer caused by chemicals and by UV radiation. We have done our work in animal models. Now it's ready to go for testing in humans,” Dwivedi said. “Best of all, this molecule has a very nice fragrance, so people will not mind using it. It smells nice, and at the same time it prevents chemically caused or UV-induced skin cancer.”

— A molecule called sarcophine-diol, made from a product called sarcophine that comes from coral found in the Red Sea, has been a focus of SDSU research over the past five years. Sarcophine-diol is effective in micrograms, as compared to milligrams for other chemopreventive products. In other words it is effective in a concentration of about one-thousandth of what the scientific literature suggests about other chemopreventive agents used against chemically and UV-induced skin cancer. SDSU testing has looked at two models so far and is now expanding to other models.

Dwivedi said collaboration with SDSU assistant professor Hesham Fahmy is moving that work forward. Fahmy, a chemist, already has one patent from his work with sarcophine-diol at the University of Mississippi when he joined SDSU's College of Pharmacy in 2004. Dwivedi, Fahmy and SDSU are now pursuing licensing of the patent based on their collaborative research of sarcophine-diol.

Dwivedi said SDSU research will also look at combining products that protect against skin cancer to provide additive/synergistic effects on the protective properties of these molecules.

SDSU is also trying to assess whether the products' potential benefits go beyond protection.

“We hope to include it in sun screen or lotion. Apply it once, and you are set for the day. We are hopeful that it will not only prevent skin cancer but may actually treat skin cancer,” Dwivedi said.

Fahmy explained that skin cancer occurs in two stages: initiation, when normal skin cells turn to precancerous skin cells and remain so for a number of years; and then promotion, a long stage of 10 to 20 years in which precancerous cells can become cancerous. There is a chance to intervene in that second stage so that promotion doesn't take place and the individual doesn't get skin cancer.

He added that cancer is able to proceed by outwitting the body's mechanism that orders programmed cell death, called apoptosis, for cells that have been genetically damaged.

“After initiation, you have these precancerous cells. But when you use these compounds, they encourage these precancerous cells to commit suicide and regenerate rather than turn cancerous,” Fahmy said. “So in this sense they can undo some of the damage. These compounds reinforce the programmed cell death process.”

May 22, 2008

SDSU research: Native American tea has health benefits

BROOKINGS, S.D. – South Dakota State University research shows that a Native American tea used in traditional medicine can help knock out upper respiratory infections.

In addition the tea is rich in antioxidants that help protect against cancer and other illnesses.

Professor Fathi Halaweish in SDSU's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry said those are among the findings from his analysis of a native tea used by communities of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe of the Lake Traverse Reservation in northeastern South Dakota. Though the tea can be consumed routinely, it is also used specifically to treat sore throats.

“I have tried it personally. It does heal your sore throat,” Halaweish said. “It contains some compounds that specifically target the bacteria that are part of the upper sore throat infection. Our research supports the long history the Native American people have for using the plant in this way.”

Currently the work is funded by the Big Coulee District of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe, Halaweish said.

Halaweish focuses a part of his research on discovering new drugs by isolating organic compounds from natural sources. Plants have formed the basis for treatment of diseases in traditional medicine for thousands of years, and continue to play a major role in the primary health care of about 80 percent of the world's inhabitants, he notes.

 “We are looking at the potential of this Native American medicine as a nutraceutical product,” Halaweish said.

That means the Native American medicine would not be marketed as a drug, but as a food product that could have medicinal or health benefits.

Halaweish subjected the tea to a series of tests to detect any antibiotic, anti-cancer, and anti-diabetic properties. In addition Halaweish did toxicity studies on the cell culture to verify that the herbal tea and the compounds it contains are safe to consume.

Halaweish said he'll be pleased if the tea proves to be a product that tribal members can produce and market commercially.

“I'm very happy that this will work for the Native American communities, that we can be a part of their vision for marketing some of their Native American plants,” Halaweish said. “This is part of our mission as a land-grant institution, to help out communities in our state.”

May 14, 2008

SDSU research: Using flax against colon cancer

BROOKINGS, S.D. — South Dakota State University studies are exploring the potential for flax to prevent and possibly even treat colon cancer.

Distinguished professor Chandradhar Dwivedi, head of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Department in the College of Pharmacy at SDSU, said his work is funded partly by the North Dakota Oilseed Council.

National Agricultural Statistics Service figures show North Dakota was the nation's leader in flax production in 2007 by a huge margin, followed by Montana, South Dakota, and Minnesota.

Dwivedi said while he was growing up in northeastern India, his family grew some flax. But it was his curiosity about a different crop, mustard, that led to his flax research.

“In our homes, most of the cooking was done in mustard oil. In that area, the incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer was very low, so in the back of our minds we had the idea for generations that mustard must be good for you,” Dwivedi said. “When I got into science and research, I became curious about what is in mustard. I found out it had Omega-3 fatty acid, which makes up about 24 percent of mustard oil.”

Unfortunately, Dwivedi noted, the mustard used by Americans on their hot dogs and hamburgers has the fatty acids taken out. So in looking around for a crop more familiar to Americans that might provide similar health benefits, Dwivedi started to work with flax. Flax is even higher in Omega-3 fatty acids than mustard is.

“I did research first on flaxseed oil, which has roughly 58 percent Omega-3 fatty acids. It prevented colon cancer development in animals,” Dwivedi said. “Then I got further into flax research and looked at flaxseed meal. Flaxseed meal has Omega-3 fatty acids, just as in flaxseed oil, but at the same time it has a chemical known as lignan. Lignans also have been reported to be cancer chemopreventive. Flaxseed meal has lignan as well as Omega-3. It's much better than flaxseed oil.”

Dwivedi performed experiments to evaluate whether flax prevented chemically induced colon cancer. He also experimented by including flax in the diets of mice that have a genetic mutation to spontaneously develop intestinal cancer.

Dwivedi's research showed that both flaxseed oil and flax meal did help prevent colon cancer development.

“It's quite remarkable. So now we are looking at the effect of the chemicals that are present in the flax meal lignans to see if they could treat cancer — if they could destroy the cancer cells that have been already formed.”

Dwivedi presented an overview of some of his flax research at the 62nd Flax Institute of the United States, held in March in Fargo.