Nevada’s Desert Research Institute to support cancer research
The Desert Research Institute has stepped into the vacuum created when the Nevada Cancer Institute collapsed by bringing a team of researchers under its umbrella.
DRI will seek U.S. Bankruptcy Court permission March 27 to lease a small part of the Engelstad Research Building for $1 a year, and gain access to the adjoining clinic that is now part of University of California, San Diego Health System. The two actions will enable DRI to house a team of 18, including nine scientists, as it tries to prevent the erosion of the area's already-thin presence in biomedical sciences while expanding its own portfolio.
Without public announcement, the team transferred to the DRI payroll on Feb. 1, the day after the bankrupt cancer institute closed the sale of its clinical practice to UCSD. The Engelstad building, empty at the time, remained with the cancer institute.
If DRI had not acted immediately and before court approval, court papers say, the scientists would have found themselves homeless and unfunded.
"We considered it the best thing for the state not to lose more intellectual capital," DRI President Stephen Wells said.
Attempts to diversify the economy in this direction have mostly fizzled partly because the Las Vegas scientific community is small. Wells agreed that scientists prefer areas with a lot of activity, such as San Diego or Boston, because they can more easily find fresh work if a project ends.
For DRI, a unit of the Nevada System of Higher Education, the move into oncology marks a departure from long-standing concentration on environmental sciences, such as air quality around Lake Tahoe and water use in the desert. DRI has not been directly involved in medicine for more than four decades.
However, Wells said that DRI has sought ways to combine environmental and medical research for several years and had co-written a proposal with the cancer institute that did not attract any grants.
"It is all part of our strategic plan and not just a random opportunity," Wells said.
Under the terms, DRI will lease 20,000 square feet of the 184,000-square-foot Engelstad building for the $1 a year plus an unspecified share of the operating expenses of $5,000 to $6,000 a month. DRI will also split evenly with the cancer institute the $12,500-a-month payment to UCSD to use the vivarium, in the basement of the clinic and office building next door, where research animals are kept. Access to the vivarium will be covered in a 90-day license until DRI can work out a permanent deal.
The package "might not be appropriate for a for-profit entity," cancer institute president George Pillari wrote in an affidavit, but it qualifies as a "sound business decision" for the nonprofit institute. Although its operations are gone, the institute hopes to continue as a fundraising entity for cancer research after it leaves Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
While UCSD wanted to expand its treatment of cancer patients into Southern Nevada, it planned to shut down research.
Researchers who support their work through outside funding sources have formed DRI's backbone for years, with the state generally contributing less than 20 percent of the annual budget. For the year ended June 30 , for example, DRI received $9.3 million from the state out of a $50.2 million budget. Federal government grants and contracts filled most of the gap.
Contact reporter Tim O'Reiley at
toreiley@reviewjournal.com
or 702-387-5290.
