A recent series of cooperative research agreements between the University of Maine and four other institutions in Maine will give the state a strong advantage in competing for federal biomedical research funds.

Among other things, the agreements grant faculty teaching and research status to certain scientists at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in Salisbury Cove, Maine Medical Center Research Institute in Scarborough and the University of Southern Maine in Portland-Gorham.

Working with UMaine researchers and students, these scientists encourage partnerships on research and education projects related to the broad and important field of biomedicine. Indeed, the establishment of these partnerships has already led to the submission of two major multi-institutional proposals to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nation’s largest single source of federal research funds.

Through collaboration, re-searchers will be better able to develop new strategies and technologies to address the increasingly complex questions faced by scientists. Traditional collaborations among biologists will be inadequate for these tasks. We will need greater interaction between biologists, chemists, physicists, engineers, computer scientists and mathematicians. As science be-comes even more complex, more sophisticated measures and means of calculation have to be developed.

Collectively, the state has great strength in these areas. For example, a proposed Center of Research Excellence in Advanced Genome Technologies takes advantage of expertise in genomics at The Jackson Laboratory and in biophysics and computation in Orono at UMaine. Each institution brings strengths that complement the other.

Let’s look at the strengths that all five institutions bring to the table. As the state’s land-grant institution, UMaine is the state’s doctoral and research university. Its Carnegie classification places it in the top tier of the nation’s 3,800 universities and colleges. (Only 4 percent of those schools at at that level.) UMaine has internationally recognized expertise in physics, chemistry, natural resources, and computational sciences and is currently building a program in biosensors.

The Jackson Laboratory is one of the world leaders in mammalian genetics, with scientists actively involved in the human genome initiative and the study of human genetic diseases such as diabetes or cancer. Several large initiatives have been recently funded that support genome-wide approaches to areas such as physiology, neurobiology, or heart and blood development. The Jackson Laboratory is the largest recipient of funds from NIH in the state, and it is one of the most successful at obtaining NIH funding nationally.

MMCRI is the research wing of the Maine Medical Center in Portland. In recent years the Institute has significantly increased its share of NIH funding, and it recently announced the establishment a NIH-funded center of excellence in vascular biology as part of its Center for Molecular Medicine.

The Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory historically has been a summer research institute with great strengths in using marine organisms. It is the site of a nationally recognized and NIH-funded toxicology research center which focuses on the toxic effects of heavy metals and other environmental contaminants. MDIBL is in the process of establishing a year-round research program and expanding its research interests to include genomics and bioinformatics.

The Applied Medical Sciences at the University of Southern Maine is a small but actively developing program, offering courses and research opportunities in immunology, molecular biology and genetics. As such, it provides both research and additional teaching capacity to the goals of the inter-institutional research and graduate studies programs.

At present, Maine is still ranked among the lowest in the country for receiving NIH funds. One of the reasons is that without a large medical school in the state, relatively few federal dollars flow into Maine for medical research. However, the goal of these partnerships is to change that picture. Greater collaboration in specialized areas will move Maine toward increasing the state’s share of federal per capita research expenditures – and, more importantly, success in discovering medically significant breakthroughs. The Maine State Planning Office has identified this strategy as a key to improving economic conditions in the state. Over time, this initiative will result in many positive benefits; creating new technologies with commercial value; providing Maine’s best and brightest high school students another reason to pursue a college education in the state; providing more jobs for qualified college graduates and other Mainers.

Collaboration is key to addressing Maine’s economic needs. The new agreement between UMaine and its four partners is a step in the right direction.

Keith Hutchison is a biochemistry professor at the University of Maine and was the winner of the Distinguished Maine Professor Award for 2000.