Celebrating 25 years at the Biotechnology Center

In 1985, when the Biotechnology Center opened its doors, the prospect of genetically engineered crops was often greeted with suspicion. Many university professors were leery of the private sector, and only three Madison-area companies were working in biotech.

As the center celebrates its 25th anniversary today (March 10) from 2–4:30 p.m. in Room 1111 of 425 Henry Mall, all of that has changed. The vast majority of corn and soybeans carry genes from other organisms. Collaboration with the private sector — or starting a company — is normal on campus.

And the Madison area has more than 150 biotech firms. The biotech center did not start these processes, but it did help them along, says Dick Burgess, a professor emeritus of oncology who was the center’s founding director, adding that the change is as much cultural as scientific. “When we started, there was a generally negative feeling about faculty being involved in companies, a feeling that, ‘You sold out to industry.’”

Today, the center maintains close ties to industry, and to scientists in many departments across campus, says current director Michael Sussman, who is also a professor of biochemistry. One focus is providing access to sophisticated analytical equipment, which seems to get faster and more expensive each year. “We’ve developed a core facility for next-generation DNA sequencing,” Sussman says, which can gobble up DNA and spit out data on its structure at astonishing rates. “Other units on campus are starting to help us procure these instruments. The biotech center sequencing facility is in a nice central location, and we can operate the equipment for everyone on campus.”

The center can also analyze the tens of thousands of proteins whose structures are encoded on DNA, which are critical components of the gene-environment interaction that determines who we are. And the biotech center is helping the campus assemble the high-horsepower computers and software necessary to handle what Sussman calls a “scary” amount of data.

Sussman is a professor of biochemistry and a founder of NimbleGen, a maker of gene chips that was recently sold to big pharma player Roche, but remains in Madison.

If biotechnology is the use of biology to make products, Wisconsin has deep roots in biotechnologies such as farming and brewing. From the first, Burgess was determined that the center address state problems. One early project looked at “greener” ways to make paper pulp. A more recent effort is helping the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, headquartered on campus, to analyze the metabolism of microbes and crops to ease the conversion of biomass into sugar and then biofuels.

The center has also played a major role in and outreach, says Burgess. “We had to find ways of countering the negativism. I gave a lot of talks. We celebrated Biofest at the Memorial Union to explain biotech. We tried to provide a positive face to the science and the scientists.”

The center also organized a meal of genetically altered foods for journalists at Memorial Union.

The biotech center, along with venture capitalists, the University Research Park and business incubators, has helped to create a prosperous biotech industry in the Madison area. “In the middle 1980s, almost everyone being trained in Madison in biological science was going to the coasts; it was an incredible brain drain,” Burgess says. “Now there are thousands of jobs in the area, and we have attracted a lot of significant talent. It took 20 years to get to the point where we are considered one of the national hotspots in biotech.”

Burgess adds that the original biotech building was the model for Biostar, a state initiative to expand on Wisconsin’s strengths in biology. “The first Biostar project was a $27 million addition to the biotech center that opened about five years ago, and we’ve used those funds to help attract and retain the best scientists, like stem cell expert Jamie Thomson,” says Sussman.

Overall, Sussman says the biotech center has become an integral part of a university with unparalleled prowess in biology. “This campus is one of the greatest biological campuses on Earth. We have 750 tenured professors in biology, and probably a greater quality, quantity and diversity of biological research than at any place outside of the National Institutes of Health campus.”

Yet nagging questions continue about what the genes are saying. The first “reading” of the human genome, about a decade ago, produced more questions than answers, and scientists have been forced to reassess large stretches of the genome that, once considered “junk,” actually control when genes operate.

“In many ways, it’s ironic,” says Sussman. “We’ve sequenced the genome, all the information is there, but we don’t know the language. It has taken quite a while to figure out the words, and even longer to figure out the phrases, but to convert them all into useful thoughts and real understanding may take quite a long time.”

The biotech center remains an asset for a broad range of biological campus scientists. “I find it really exciting to help our faculty and staff do experiments; these analytical methods are opening a completely new way to figure out what biology is doing,” Sussman says. “For example, a campus researcher just contacted me; he wanted to study the genetics of anxious mice, and I said, ‘Why stop at genetics? Let’s also look at the proteins and the metabolism all at once.”

That’s the power of having a central facility with cutting edge equipment and the people who can run them, Sussman says. “Being able to compare anxious and normal mice, and to monitor many thousands of small molecules to see which are important, and how they are changing. Nobody has done that!”