Published November 26, 2024
UB’s health sciences schools, from medicine, to nursing, to public health (to name a few), and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center have long been collaborators.
But to fully leverage these collaborations, their research communities must be well informed about each other’s resources to find even more opportunities to work together and maximize investments in the region.
To that end, UB’s Office of the Vice President for Health Sciences and Roswell Park hosted “Research Resources Day” on Nov. 6 at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. The event provided an opportunity for representatives from UB, Roswell Park, the Jacobs Institute, and other prominent institutions within the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus to present and discuss resources and services available to the research community.
The gathering also highlighted the strong partnership between UB and Roswell Park and their many collaborations in education and research.
“I’m incredibly appreciative of the participation of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center and the leadership’s collaboration on this event,” said Allison Brashear, MD, MBA, UB’s vice president for health sciences and dean of the Jacobs School.
“We really want to highlight all of the work that we do with Roswell Park, which as an NIH-recognized Comprehensive Cancer Center, is a tremendous asset to our community and to organizations across the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.”
While addressing the audience, Brashear noted that many recent Jacobs School master’s and doctoral graduates studied at Roswell Park. She also encouraged attendees to speak with each other, find out about one another’s research and expertise, and continue to build new collaborations vital to ongoing research.
Brashear discussed how collaboration, not only among individuals but also institutions, is key to advancement. “Part of what UB wants to do is to be a top 25 public research institution. And we’re well on our way. Part of the way we do that is to partner with Roswell,” she said.
Renier Brentjens, MD, PhD, deputy director and chair of the Department of Medicine at Roswell Park and professor of medicine at the Jacobs School, further emphasized the importance of researchers’ shared resources. “It’s absolutely critical that we go out and find out what resources are available to each other so that we can optimize the research that is done at UB as well as at Roswell Park,” he said.
Brentjens, who earned his MD-PhD at UB, noted the significance of the event and of future opportunities to connect the research community. “Hopefully this is the start and continuation of many more fruitful collaborations between the University at Buffalo and Roswell Park.”
The event included more than a dozen presentations given by researchers, administrators, and center directors from Roswell Park, UB, and other Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus institutions. These talks aimed to inform attendees of available resources and services to enhance research capabilities.
Spencer Rosario, PhD, director of Roswell Park’s Bioanalytics, Metabolomics and Pharmacokinetics (BMPK) Shared Resource center, discussed the role of metabolomics and related resources in research. Rosario earned her doctoral degree in 2020 at UB as part of Roswell Park’s graduate degree program in molecular pharmacology and cancer therapeutics.
“Metabolomics and metabolism are really becoming increasingly important to understand both normal biology and disease biology,” she said, adding that the study of metabolites can enhance knowledge of energy production, cellular communication, tumor biology, and other key processes.
The center provides services related to bioanalytics and metabolomics, clinical and pre-clinical pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, bioinformatics analysis, and more. “I want to drive home that we’re a full-service shared resource to help move your research grants and papers forward,” Rosario said.
Gabrielle Budziszewski, PhD, operations manager of the National Crystallization Center at Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute (HWI), discussed the high-throughput protein crystallization screening services available to researchers.
By crystallizing and determining the structure of proteins, researchers can better understand their function and their connection to human health and disease, she explained. Creating the right conditions to crystallize proteins can be difficult. But Budziszewski described how the center can evaluate different conditions in a single test, reducing protein sample volume and crystallization cocktail needed.
Including researchers at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, the center has worked with over 60 institutions in the past year, Budziszewski says. “We’ve been able to work with a broad range of people working not only on proteins but on other biological macromolecules and take their own unique needs into account,” she said.
As was recently announced, HWI is joining UB and will continue to work toward advancing medical science research and education in Western New York and beyond.
Roswell Park’s Biorepository and Laboratory Services (BLS) shared resource provides researchers with a comprehensive data and biospecimen bank for blood, bone marrow and remnant surgical tumor and normal tissues. Christine Ambrosone, PhD, BLS director, explained some of the available services and recent enhancements.
The facility has focused on integrating and consolidating services and collections to make research processes and study-specific collections more efficient, she said.
“We’re modernizing and streamlining the processes for collecting, selecting and obtaining samples,” she said, noting the dedicated staff available to assist investigators to obtain optimal samples and use of a new automated robotic freezer providing cutting-edge storage and retrieval, among other features.
The UB Genomics and Bioinformatics Core provides genetic sequencing capabilities and analysis of sequencing data for investigators, offering full-service support from initial design through bioinformatic data analysis.
Its director, Norma Nowak, PhD, shared information on services, along with images and details about some of the center’s latest technology. Researchers studying cancer biology, epigenetics, the microbiome, and many other areas use their services, noted Nowak, who is also professor of biochemistry at the Jacobs School. “We’re there to serve you to make sure that you’re competitive when you write your grant applications and when you publish your papers,” she said.
Lately, Nowak said the fastest-growing services include single-cell transcriptomics, which involves gene expression analysis at the single-cell level, and spatial biology transcriptomics, which involves mapping gene expression directly in tissue instead of analyzing separate extracted cells.
Nowak also directs the UB Biorepository, whose well-curated biosamples have been integral to translational discoveries and are available for research use across enterprises and specialties.
In addition to the centers above, attendees also learned more about services and resources at the Canon Stroke and Vascular Research Center, the Jacobs Institute, UB’s Center for Computational Research, the Clinical Research Core at UB’s School of Dental Medicine, Curia Global, and more.
When presentations concluded, attendees visited the Jacobs School foyer for a poster session featuring some 60 posters and representatives sharing more information about research and clinical centers and services from across UB and the Jacobs School, Roswell Park, and other area institutions.
Roswell Park offers more than 20 scientific shared resources that provide the region’s research scientists with access to sophisticated scientific instrumentation, cutting-edge technical and analytical applications, comprehensive sample biorepositories, and more. To learn more about these resources and how to access them, see: roswellpark.org/shared-resources
For more information on research centers, facilities, and resources at UB, visit: buffalo.edu/research/research-expertise/research-centers-institutes