Welcome to the Chicago Biomedical Consortium

The mission of the Chicago Biomedical Consortium is to stimulate collaboration among scientists at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Chicago that will transform research at the frontiers of biomedicine.

2008 Catalyst Application Dates

Catalyst Awards in 2008 have two scheduled rounds, one in Spring and one in the Fall. The Spring deadline passed on March 14, 2008. The submission deadline for the Fall round is 5:00 p.m., September 5, 2008. The 2008 Catalyst application process and program description are very similar to the guidelines for 2007. However, please check the "RFA: Catalyst" link for updated information, including minor changes in the required application format.

Spring 2008 Catalyst Award Announced

Bruce T. Lahn (University of Chicago) and John A. Kessler (Northwestern University) have received a Catalyst Award for their project entitled "Testing the ‘Occlusis’ Model of Cell Fate Restriction." The research team recently developed a cell fusion strategy to address the absence of a ready experimental system for ascertaining whether the silent state of a gene is the result of cis rather than trans regulation. The strategy makes it possible to dissect out the relative contribution of cis versus trans mechanisms to gene silencing and entails fusing two disparate cell types and searching for genes differentially expressed between the two genomes of fused cells. The researchers plan to develop the cell-fusion-based approach for identifying and analyzing occluded genes and, specifically, intend to pursue the following two aims: 1) to test whether the occluded state of a gene, once acquired during development, is essentially irreversible; and 2) to explore the biochemical mechanisms underlying gene occlusion.

CBC Announces First Spark Award

The first Spark was awarded to a team of collaborators from Northwestern and the University of Chicago: Thomas O'Halloran, Vinayak Dravid, and Jonathan Silverstein. Support from the two-year Spark Award will be used to fund two scientists who will aid CBC faculty members in using a high-resolution cryo-capable scanning transmission electron microscope (Cryo STEM), soon to be acquired. The microscope is capable of following changes in subcellular distributions of essential or toxic metal ions at the level of a few hundred atoms at a time and offers the unprecedented ability to produce quantitative maps of each relevant element within a biological sample. One CBC-funded scientist will support use of the instrument and train and advise CBC users in sample preparation and data acquisition. A second CBC-funded scientist will make the resulting multidimensional data usable by developing computational methods for 2-D and 3-D volumetric rendering representing the spatial variations in elemental concentrations.

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CBC Summer Workshop in Proteomics & Informatics, August 4-7, 2008

The CBC 4-day summer workshop in Proteomics and Informatics will start on Monday August 4, 2008 at the CBC/UIC Proteomics and Informatics Services Facility (PISF). This intensive workshop will offer a theoretical and practical introduction to tandem mass spectrometry proteomics, including the key experimental methods and computational tools needed to pursue analysis of complex proteomic samples.

If you have any questions please contact Aharon Solomon.