University of Michigan fills void Pfizer left in Ann Arbor a decade ago
See inside the University of Michigan NCRC
Gallery: See inside the University of Michigan NCRC
By Martin Slagter | mslagter@mlive.com
ANN ARBOR, MI -- David Canter jokes that the only reminders he gets about his days with Pfizer Inc. are from journalists looking back on the biopharmaceutical company's exit from its Ann Arbor home in 2007.
The reason for Canter's forward-thinking mindset could have something to do with the strides the University of Michigan's North Campus Research Complex has made since taking occupancy of the campus in eight years since it was acquired from Pfizer for $108 million.
Renovations continue among the complex of 28 buildings, comprising 2.1 million square feet of office, research and manufacturing space. A $160 million renovation project will create an entirely new 139,000-square-foot home for most of Michigan Medicine's clinical pathology activities, while renovating another 47,000 square feet of existing space.
Another $78.5 million project is expected to create more than 50 modern research laboratories for faculty scientists and their teams in the UM Medical School inside the last two empty buildings on the site.
All told, the remaining 30 percent of unoccupied space within the NCRC is expected to be filled within the next couple of years, said Canter, who transitioned from Pfizer to become executive director of the NCRC. The 2,100 workers displaced by the Pfizer move have been replaced by 2,800 people, including 2,200 employees and approximately 600 students within the NCRC.
Canter expects that number to grow to 3,400 people in the next couple of years, creating a collaborative space where UM can broaden its horizons as a research institution while strengthening its ability to stimulate new business through partnerships with businesses in the private sector.
"It's a distant memory that I don't really think about, other than when I bump into my colleagues around town - many of whom are still working and have created livelihoods and businesses that have been successful," Canter said. "What I see here with the use of this facility is that a building, per se, is only a tool - a means to another end.
"Pfizer used it to discover drugs and tried to design buildings appropriately," he added. "The university took over the facility and really could have done many things with it, but chose to create this multidisciplinary, multi-school campus."
On any given afternoon, a walk around the endless hallways of the NCRC's sprawling 174 acres can result in collaborative research between eight different groups from 10 different schools and colleges at UM.
At the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation, faculty from 17 different schools and colleges at UM continue to explore research topics including ongoing evaluation of the Healthy Michigan Plan -- the expansion of Medicaid to 600,000 Michigan adults.
At Mcity, a 32-acre connected and automated vehicle test site, researchers from both UM and the private sector work to implement a connected and automated mobility system on the streets of southeastern Michigan by 2021.
The key to this innovation, Canter says, is collaboration, with the NCRC serving as a melting pot for multiple schools to come together as the campus continues to serve as a hub from everything from startup businesses to performing DNA sequencing, genotyping and gene expression analysis.
"If you walk around the rest of the (UM) campus and point to a building, it's almost always a single school -- pharmacy, dentistry, engineering, the medical school," Canter said. "When you come to the NCRC, suddenly you can't do that. So the health system has taken responsibility for being the coordinator of this campus and yet we have a significant engineering presence here, we have a presence of pharmacy and dentistry faculty in labs."
Here is a look at three areas of research and innovation taking place at the NCRC a decade removed from Pfizer's announcement it was exiting:
Beyond biology
Research within the NCRC goes far beyond the stereotypical test tubes and microscope, as evidenced by the UM Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.
Nearly 150 of the 500 members of the institute from across campus have offices within the research complex, with more than 400 research staff working with faculty members at the NCRC.
Dr. John Ayanian, director of the IHPI, said the sizable organization's mission is to improve the quality, safety, affordability and equity of healthcare. That mission is accomplished through the efforts of researchers from 17 different schools and colleges on campus, including the Medical School, School of Public Health, Nursing, Engineering, Business, Law, Public Policy and others.
In the NCRC, they work together to come up with solutions for improving everything from the Healthy Michigan Plan to working with surgeons to improve the safety of prescribing opioids for pain management.
"Having this new institute in this space enables us to have more effective collaboration across different disciplines within the university," Ayanian said. "That allows for more creative and influential research when we have faculty with different skills working together on new projects."
One of those new projects is an analysis looking at the impact of the Healthy Michigan Plan - the expansion of Medicaid -- which began in April 2014 and currently covers about 600,000 low-income Michiganders.
The study, which was reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, indicated that in addition to the new enrollees, the plan has generated more than 30,000 jobs every year since being implemented. The jobs yielded about $2.3 billion more in personal spending power each year for Michigan residents, the study showed.
Ayanian and UM health economist Dr. Helen Levy conducted the study with Dr. Gabriel M. Ehrlich and Donald R. Grimes from the Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics, a UM economic modeling and forecasting unit. The team used the same economic model that this unit employs to advise the state for fiscal planning.
Studies in that area continue, Ayanian said.
"We just finished a survey of 4,000 enrollees in the Healthy Michigan Plan to understand how they're using health services and what affect it's having on their health," he said.
"We're trying to align what we're doing at the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation with larger initiatives across campus related to innovation in healthcare to improving the health of communities, and continuing to work with state and federal policymakers in regards to healthcare reform as that takes shape under the new administration and congress," he added.
The IHPI also recently launched the Michigan Opioid Prescribing Engagement Network (Michigan-OPEN), an initiative to develop a preventative approach to the opioid epidemic, Ayanian said.
The initiative aims to ensure appropriate acute pain care following surgery - when the vast majority of people who become dependent on prescription opioids receive their first dose.
"We are working with surgeons around the state to improve the use of opioids and other treatments for pain management at the time of surgery, injury or major procedures to try and reduce some of the risks of people becoming chronically addicted to opioids that may be present in the healthcare system now," Ayanian said. "That's part of the reason we're seeing so much overuse and overdoses and other complications of chronic opioid use."
Incubation innovation
From working with Fortune 500 companies to help solve their product issues to securing $1.5 million in grant funding from the U.S. Navy, Kausik Mukhopadhyay explained the work his start-up HygraTek has about any type of surface innovation you can think of coated and covered.
As one of the 13 start-ups currently in U-M's Venture Accelerator, HygraTek develops cost-effective and energy-efficient liquid separation solutions combined with a membrane technology that essentially strains oil from water.
In addition, it has developed coating technology that surpasses nature's ability to repel and attract various substances, Mukhopadhyay said, demonstrating how various types of fabric repelled liquids inside a Venture Accelerator laboratory.
The work HygraTek is doing, he said, could even prove to be the difference, should a disaster similar to the 2010 BP-operated Deepwater Horizon oil spill happen again.
"These are very dynamic membranes and they are used for very niche applications like military applications or for things like the BP oil spill," Mukhopadhyay said. "That's how it started - how to have a membrane that can separate the oil and the water if there is a next spill, so that we don't lose the oil and we can also save the aquatic culture as well as aquatic species so that they don't die, because we can immediately get the fresh water separated."
The Venture Center serves as a business incubator focusing exclusively on commercializing UM research and intellectual property. Accelerator tenants have access to UM's Tech Transfer Venture Center to help them refine business models, attract investors, acquire gap funding and connect to talent that enhances the company's quality and sustainability. Accelerator tenants can also seek guidance from seasoned entrepreneurs in Tech Transfer's Mentors in Residence program.
Venture Accelerator Manager Diane Giannola said the incubator has had as many as 24 start-ups operating within the NCRC during her tenure, occupying 18,000 square feet within the facility.
UM startups sign flexible one-year leases for access to laboratory and office space, along with a suite of business services from the Venture Center. Most startups typically are in the accelerator for up to three years, but sometimes longer if they are in the middle of grant funding.
The accelerator offers flexibility start-ups need to expand and contract on short notice, Giannola said, making Venture a good first step before heading out into the business world.
"It's very flexible and that's what being in an incubator is all about," she said. "We're an accelerator in that they have a limited time frame here. With incubators, people can usually lease forever. Here, they have three years, maybe a fourth if they are in the middle of a grant. They're supposed to grow and move on to a space in the city."
Mukhopadhyay said HygraTek currently is developing six or seven different coating applications, including ice-phobicity, a single-step, spray-on coating that prevents ice adhesion on everything from aircraft engines to wind turbines.
The coatings work on a much smaller scale as well, Mukhopadhyay noted, from removing fingerprints from objects like tablets and smartphones to helping consumers get the most use possible out of products in yogurt and ketchup bottles.
"In some containers, there's still a lot at the bottom, so you keep losing (the product)," he said. "From the company or consumer point of view, you are losing the material. So how about if you can take it out completely without losing anything? It's a very slick coating, so everything slips out."
Collaboration brings results
Since moving into the NCRC in 2012, faculty from UM's Biointerfaces Institute have strived to translate new research findings into practical applications.
The research has led to the medical advances from a unique polymer surface that can grow reprogrammed adult stem cells to produce specific cell types in mice to the development of mechanisms by which "hairy nanoparticles" can selectively trap, at very low levels, toxins such as methylmercury.
A total of 25 research groups from UM's schools of Engineering, Dentistry, Medicine and Pharmacy are co-located in the Biointerfaces Institute, occupying 54,000 square feet of space. Collaboratively, they are advancing research in areas of nanotechnology, microfluidics and sensors, cell and tissue engineering and biomaterials and drug delivery.
Biointerfaces Institute Director Dr. Joerg Lahann echoed the sentiments of many within the NCRC who believe having the ability to collaborate with people of different types of expertise allows not only allows breakthroughs in research, but a chance to think outside the box in coming up with medical and technological innovations.
"We were based on a grassroots approach of faculty that thought there was an opportunity in Michigan to combine cutting edge research from engineering with the medical school -- to basically focus more on translational outcomes in our research," Lahann said.
"If you think about trying to have real impact on patients, you shouldn't have to think about what school or department someone is in," he added. "You should think about what type of skill sets the research group has and what do we need to be able to do that. That's exactly what we did with the institute. Ultimately now we have people from 11 different departments."
Lahann stressed that interdisciplinary research is critical for creating impact, which has made the Biointerfaces Institute a hub for reinventing the research process itself.
Through the institute, researchers are diving into crossroads between living cells and other surfaces in developing new technologies for diagnosing and treating disease, with a huge stress on cancer, translational oncology and stem cell research.
"Research-wise this has really changed the way my lab operates," he said. "We moved in here as an engineering lab with the intent of focusing on technologies. We just didn't have the immediate access to the medical (experts). The institute can really do that for us."
Walking through one of the laboratories of the institute, which intermingles students and research faculty, UM PhD. student Nathan Jones continues work on developing a product that can detect cavities in teeth early on through a starch-based, fluorescent nanoparticle that targets active cavities.
The nanoparticle, part of the Greenmark Biomedical startup Jones is a part of, is designed to help dentists differentiate between a cavity that is active or getting worse versus when it is healed or inactive.
Jones said the Biointerfaces Institute has been instrumental in the development of the technology, which has since developed into a startup to commercialize it.
"The idea is because it's starch, we have enzymes in our mouths that will break that down into simple sugar that washes away and degrades," Jones said. "So you can go to the dentist with these particles and make a cavity glow and it will wash away and you won't have to worry about glowing outside of the dentist office."
These types of innovation, which come through collaboration, are the heart of the NCRC's mission, Canter said, and are at the heart of the future for the research complex in the decades ahead.
"We've got a lot of opportunities in the next 10 to 20 years to put whatever we want here, but I'd like to believe we've started a permanent change in multi-school, multi-disciplinary research that will attract a certain type of faculty," Canter said. "Those we are recruiting will look at it and say 'I want to be here. This is exciting and interesting.' Not everyone wants to be in this environment, but by providing this type of space, I think that's what we will have."
For more information on what's happening at the NCRC, check out its annual report.