Top Drug Researcher Lands at U: Her $7.8 Million NIH Grant Will Follow Her
By Paul Tosto, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
Feb. 22–An internationally known drug researcher with a knack for winning big federal research grants will join the University of Minnesota next fall, a move that could catapult the U’s pharmaceutical research efforts.
A leader in drug discovery and development with a focus on cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, Gunda Georg also recently won a $7.8 million National Institutes of Health grant to discover male contraceptives. That money will follow her, opening the possibility that the U could become a leader in lucrative future drug markets.
Her hiring is a coup for university leaders who have agonized in recent months about the U slipping in the competition for federal research dollars. U officials spent the past nine months recruiting Georg from the University of Kansas.
Her work matches up with U President Robert Bruininks’ desire to commercialize more research, part of his plan to remake the university. She’ll head the medicinal chemistry department in the College of Pharmacy and hold two endowed chairs. Her research team, about 25 members, is expected to follow her from Kansas.
“It’s a unique opportunity,” Georg, 59, said in a phone interview. The U’s medicinal chemistry unit is home already to “very good, internationally known scientists.”
Her expertise is analyzing chemical compounds to find drugs potentially useful in cancer treatment. She’s published papers on the structure and activity of the cancer drug Taxol and researched how to get Taxol into the brain. She’s expected to work closely with the university’s cancer experimental therapeutics group.
Georg’s hiring establishes drug discovery and development as a “major focus” at the U, said Marilyn Speedie, dean of the College of Pharmacy. “The department is a very strong department but we haven’t had all the modern pieces for drug development,” she said. Georg will “put it all together.”
A licensed pharmacist as well as researcher, Georg (pronounced GAY-ORG) didn’t grow up among scientists. Her parents owned an upholstery shop in a small town near Frankfurt, Germany, and her first tools were hammers and handsaws. She developed an interest in physics and chemistry in high school.
“What I really like about science is the precision,” she said. “Science at the molecular level for me is the last frontier. It’s very satisfying to think about things that nobody else has thought about before.”
Georg’s ability to win research money is renowned. The National Institutes of Health identified Georg as among the top 5 percent of researchers receiving funding through the NIH during the past 25 years.
Raising research money and turning research into “intellectual property” that generate royalties are key pieces of Bruininks’ strategy for the U’s future.
U officials in December noted a small but worrisome dip in its federally funded science and engineering research spending — from $295.4 million to $293.3 million between 2002 and 2003. That set hands wringing because the U was among only three institutions out of 100 showing a decline in that period.
That report also noted that while Congress doubled the NIH budget between 1998 and 2003, the U increased its NIH funding by only 75 percent. NIH money accounts for nearly half the U’s research spending.
The U earned about $48 million last year through commercializing its research. Nearly all of that, however, was connected to one product, the AIDS drug Ziagen.
It fact, it was Ziagen money that helped seal the deal for Georg. The U in 1999 settled a patent lawsuit with pharmaceutical giant Glaxo Wellcome over Ziagen. The settlement was expected to bring as much as $300 million to the university to fund research.
University of Kansas officials said Monday they made a “significant counteroffer” to keep Georg but couldn’t compete with U’s ability to tap the Ziagen windfall.
Paul Tosto covers higher education and can be reached at ptosto@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-2119.
Gunda Georg
Age: 59
New job: Chairwoman, Department of Medicinal Chemistry, College of Pharmacy, University of Minnesota
Personal: Her 85-year-old mother will come with her to Minnesota.
Enjoys: Science and downhill skiing. She grew up skiing in Germany and hopes the skiing will be a bit better here than in Kansas.
Compensation: Includes a salary of $227,000 and another $50,000, which she plans to use to support her research and laboratory.
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Copyright (c) 2006, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
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