State awards University of Iowa $8.2M for bioscience research, economic development

IOWA CITY — University of Iowa researchers — among their many discoveries — have created new disaster response models, artificial intelligence diagnostic tools, telemedicine tactics and COVID-19 response measures.

This week, Gov. Kim Reynolds awarded the UI $8.2 million from federal pandemic dollars to keep expanding its bioscience research and economic development opportunities it generates.

The UI will direct the millions toward infrastructure needed to boost the campus' entrepreneurial skills — renovating space in its old College of Pharmacy building to enable faculty from across the campus to “explore the applications of their research.”

The grant also will go toward building out the top floor of the UI’s 3-year-old College of Pharmacy building to allow pharmaceutical faculty with labs in the old building to move closer to colleagues.

“Our faculty, staff, and students are ready to unravel the next bioscience inventions,” UI Executive Vice President and Provost Kevin Kregel said in a statement. “This investment from the state removes one of the hurdles in their way, which is access to wet lab space.”

A wet lab is laboratory space fitted with the plumbing, ventilation and other equipment needed to test and analyze drugs, chemicals and potentially hazardous matter.

The UI has wet labs across its campuses, including in the BioVentures Center at its Coralville-based research park. But UI Chief Innovation Officer Jon Darsee said, “Commercial wet lab space for clinicians and researchers is essential to creating a robust pipeline of startup companies that will solve the health care needs of Iowans.”

As an example of what bioscience investment can mean, Darsee cited Digital Diagnostics — a UI-founded and research park-based artificial intelligence company, formerly known as IDx, that’s developed a system for detecting diabetic retinopathy.

As the first autonomous diagnostic system cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to use artificial intelligence to make diagnostic assessments, Darsee said, Digital Diagnostics is “pioneering solutions that connect people in rural communities to specialized medicine for treating diabetes and other diseases.”

“We recognize the level of in-depth and high-quality, valuable research being conducted at the University of Iowa to further advance the health of the people of our state, our nation and across the globe,” Reynolds said in a statement announcing the grant.

“That’s why we’re making this commitment to provide the researchers the solutions they need to excel and continue advancing the future of biosciences.”

In airing specific plans for the $8.2 million, UI officials said they plan to renovate space in the south tower of the old College of Pharmacy building for faculty research, exploration and investigation.

In building out the top floor of the new pharmacy building — which opened in January 2020 and nearly doubled the size of the old one — pharmaceutical faculty can improve collaboration.

By enhancing existing research and laboratory space, officials said, they’ll avoid constructing a new building — although the medical campus has plenty of construction projects in the works, including a new west campus academic building.

“We are deeply appreciative of the support from the governor, and we look forward to getting this project started,” UI President Barbara Wilson said in a statement. “Our innovative faculty, staff, and students urgently need more laboratory space to support the growth of drug discovery, biomedical research, and ultimately economic development — all made possible by this grant.”

In the budget year that ended June 30, Iowa’s three public universities combined for more than $1.5 billion in sponsored funding — including $617 million in competitive federal grants and awards. That total involved research funding records for both the UI and Iowa State University, according to a new Board of Regents report.

“The regent universities work diligently to develop breakthroughs that help to improve Iowa’s economy through economic development, technology transfer, and commercialization of research,” according to the report, which found the UI secured its highest-ever external funding total for research, scholarship and creative activities in fiscal 2022 at $867.2 million.

Its royalties and license fee income from intellectual property and patents also exploded from $1.8 million in fiscal 2021 to $3.7 million last year.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com