Wadsworth Center extending its reach - The Business Review (Albany):

omagyvoham.wordpress.com
The for Laboratories Research, the research division of the state Departmentof Health, has been in existencse for more than 40 years. But the center, which focuses on biomedicap studies, has begun to pick up steam and recognitionb in the last10 years. Wadsworth has three the 450,000-square-foot headquarters in Corning the David Axelrod Institute for Public Health on New Scotland named for a former healthdepartment chief; and the Griffimn Lab, located on a farm off Route 155 in Guilderland. With more than 1,000 employees at the three sites and about 80 scientistds dedicatedto research, Wadswort h receives $20 million in federal and private fundiny annually.
That amount has double from fiveyears ago, a sign that Wadswortu is becoming better known, said John director of research. Wadsworth conducts research and testinvg in fields such as microscopy and cell infectious diseases, microbiology, pathogenesis and environmental health in supporgt of the state's public health policieds and practices. But the center branches out from providing just apublic service. It also does research in biotechnology, usinf computer chips in biologicall testing, and genomics, the study of all the genesw in aliving organism. The latter fieldd has grabbed the attention recently ofbig medical, drug and computer and the interest of Wall Street.
Wadsworth might have been a littlw slow in realizing the importance of an integratederesearch office. Only last year did it get its firstf directorof research. Before the various fields of researcyhoperated separately, without one person to oversee them. And in the last two or three years, the centerf has made some headway indeveloping joint, high-tech biotechnologuy projects with the research facilities at , the state Universitg at Albany and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy.
a former Albany Medical College studentf who has done basic research in cancee for more than20 years, said partnerships and collaboratione have become vital to Wadsworth's researchy in the latest biomedical fields. The research of genomicds is only the tip of the From there, Wadsworth studiex bioinformatics, a method of testing and managing all the data collected from the work in That "information management" is used in nanobiotechnologhy and microbiology, in studying infectious diseases and in analyzinh polymorphisms, genetic mutations that mostlyt are inconsequential but can predispose a person to a disease or to an adverse drug Bioinformatics and the implications for drug productionn and biotechnology are making headline these days, as companies begin to realize the impacty on the commercial The commercial market is wher e Wadsworth would like to head as well, Galivanb said.
Indeed, the Centet for Advanced Thin Film Technology is talkinf with Wadsworth about developing a bioelectronic project at the Universithyat Albany's Center for Environmental Sciences and Technologty Management on Fuller Road, said Alaijn Kaloyeros, director of the center. The thin film center developds productsfor commercialization. To get there, Galivan realizes the need for partnerships. "We have complemental with arearesearch facilities, he said. "There'es a lot of fertile ground we're exploring." Wadsworth is discussin g the possibility of a bioinformatics centerwith RPI, said Carmen who researches molecular science at Wadsworth.
Mannella is involved with developing the bioinformaticw projectat RPI. Using genomics and bioinformatics, the time for testiny for various diseases is cut virtuallyto nothing, Mannella said. Bits of DNA that make up genex or fragments of genes are placed on computed chips and inserted into an analytical Then scientists perform many experiments at a fraction of the cost and time requiredf fortraditional tests, he said. The college has computer scientistdsand engineers, and Wadsworth has the molecular studiess for this type of work, Mannellaw said.
"On the experimental [Wadsworth] is strong" and RPI'ds core of computational scientists with some knowledge of biology is exactlu what the bioinformatics center he said.