`Living Lab` Will Assist Cancer Cell Studies

FEI and Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) are partnering to create a ‘Living Lab for Cell Biology’ that will provide researchers with several electron microscopes including a Titan Krios™ TEM and a Helios NanoLab™ DualBeam™. to advance the understanding and treatment of complex diseases such as cancer and AIDS.

The lab will be run by Joe Gray, PhD, a renowned cancer and genomic researcher recently recruited to OHSU from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Gray was one of the primary contributors to the development of the Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization (FISH) test that transformed how treatments are selected for breast cancer patients.

The collaboration was attractive to FEI because of the scientific foundation that was fostered at OHSU when it was awarded an electron microscope from the National Institutes of Health in 1997. The user base of scientists at
OHSU has since grown as a result of initiatives between regional institutions, including Portland State University.

These efforts are also being accelerated by philanthropic support, including the $100 million gift from Nike Chairman Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, to further the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute’s mission to make personalised cancer therapy a reality for all patients, and an anonymous $40 million donation to help build the OUS-OHSU Collaborative Life Sciences Building on the South Waterfront. “The Living Lab and the Life Sciences Building are evidence of what is possible when there is a close working relationship between business, OHSU and the other OUS institutions,” said OHSU President Joe Robertson, M.D., M.B.A. “Working together, with the support of philanthropy, will ultimately  improve Oregonians’ health and the economic vitality of our community.”

“FEI’s goal for the Living Lab is to increase research productivity by providing directly interpretable information from its electron microscopy solutions so that scientists can more rapidly gain the knowledge necessary to advance medicine and save lives,” stated Dominique Hubert, Vice President and General Manager of FEI’s Life Science Division. “FEI’s vision is that by making electron microscopy simple and efficient enough to use in a clinical environment, it will be able to provide insight to health-care teams that simply isn’t available with techniques used today.”