Larry Sklar works in scientific teams crossing multiple disciplines to answer important research questions and create innovative tools to make discoveries about the world around us.

by Luke Frank

UNM Regents Professor of Pathology Larry Sklar stepped up to the podium last spring to deliver his lecture, “Team Science: Partnerships for Innovation, Discovery, and Translation.”

This was a very special presentation for Sklar indeed, as he was selected to dispense UNM’s 53rd Annual Research Lecture, one of the highest honors the University of New Mexico bestows on its faculty members. The lectureship is intended to encourage research and creative work on the university campus.

“Teamwork” and “partnerships” are words echoed increasingly in federal grant submissions and research corridors throughout academia. Sklar can certainly speak to the issue – he works as part of several teams, as Director of the NIEHS Biotechnology Core and Biotechnology Integration and Associate Director of Basic Research for UNM’s School of Medicine, Director of Cancer Biotechnology at UNM’s Cancer Center, principal investigator of W.M. Keck-UNM Shared Animal Imaging Resource, and Director of the New Mexico Molecular Libraries Screening Center.

The Power of Collaboration
According to Sklar, scientific teams crossing multiple scientific disciplines are now being assembled to answer important research questions. These scientific teams can work together to create innovative scientific tools and use these new tools to make discoveries about the world around us. Some of this innovation and discovery can be translated into opportunities for health diagnostics and therapeutics, as well as economic development.

Perhaps the greatest examples of “team science” in the U.S. are the Manhattan Project or the modern-day Human Genome Project, but Sklar offers his personal example of collaboration and innovation.

Drug discovery today depends upon the rapid analysis of molecular libraries. Researchers use cytometers to test hundreds of different cell and other molecular targets against potential drug candidates. Cytometers have enhanced cell research, but only one sample at a time.

Sklar and colleague Bruce Edwards, a co-researcher and professor at UNM’s Health Sciences Center, along with numerous other team members, have developed High-Throughput Flow Cytometer technology that is leading to new molecular discoveries and ultimately new diagnoses and treatments. This innovative system performs cell analysis 5-20 times faster than standard cytometers.

Another Team Science Project
Team science is further being cultivated by the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) National Roadmap for Medical Research, its approach to accelerated fundamental discovery, and translation of that knowledge into effective prevention strategies and new treatments. Roadmap strategic initiatives are designed to synergize the work of numerous NIH Institutes and Centers, and collectively represent a unique effort that no single or group of institutes can accomplish. The three primary initiatives for NIH funding are New Pathways to Discovery, Research Teams of the Future and Re-engineering the Clinical Enterprise.

“Scientific Teams can attack big problems employing several different science disciplines, multi-disciplinary groups and multi-collaborative groups,” Sklar asserts. “These teams can more efficiently help science fill the gaps between what we know and don’t know.”

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UNM Selected As National Molecular Discovery Center
In 2008, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) selected the University of New Mexico as one of only nine national molecular discovery centers in the U.S. with a six-year, $15.5 million grant.

Part of the NIH Roadmap Molecular Libraries Initiative, the UNM Center for Molecular Discovery will operate as a biological screening center effecting and monitoring the interactions of small molecules and proteins that can regulate biological processes.

Among other things, the center will function as a discovery center aimed at identifying small molecules that can be used as chemical probes and as leads for drug discovery. These capabilities have tremendous potential for economic development in New Mexico. Discoveries at the molecular level can have pharmaceutical, clinical and research applications.

“We have a great team that we’ve been building for years,” remarks Larry Sklar, UNM Regents Professor and discovery center director. “We’ve even developed and patented, with Bruce Edwards as co-inventor, some of our own technology to dramatically accelerate the process of molecular discovery.”

“The UNM Center for Molecular Discovery has been in pilot phase for about three years,” adds Richard Larson, Vice President for Translational Research and Senior Associate Dean for Research at UNM’s School of Medicine. “Now we can move into the production phase.”

The NIH Molecular Libraries Program offers public sector biomedical researchers access to the large-scale screening capacity necessary to identify small molecules that can be optimized as chemical probes to study the functions of genes, cells and biochemical pathways. This will lead to new ways of exploring the functions of genes and signaling pathways in health and disease, according to the NIH.

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