Local Solutions for Global Problems

The old adage about building a better mousetrap had some appeal to me when, as a young graduate student, I was trying to find a way to serve an eviction notice to a rodent who had taken up residence in my apartment. These days, however, I reserve my entrepreneurial enthusiasm for products and services with the potential to solve more pressing problems. If you catch me breaking into a poor imitation of Tevye and Lazar Wolfe singing “To Life” from the Broadway musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” it may just be because of the exciting life-science innovations generated right here in our back yard that offer prospects of enhanced air quality, improved cancer survival and even the discovery of life elsewhere in our solar system and beyond. Who are these prescient innovators? They range from highly trained scientists and engineers to concerned citizens. Their innovative solutions are spinning out of local academic and government-agency research labs, corporate entities, not-for-profit incubators and community organizations. An early-January trip to Santa Clara for California State University ’s annual CSUPERB Biotechnology Symposium offered a spellbinding glimpse into the possibilities of the future, compliments of multidisciplinary research and entrepreneurial efforts, many emerging from research labs at California State University – Northridge. It didn’t take much searching to find others in the community pursuing similar ends with equal resolve and impressive results. Take air quality, for example. Having grown up in a time when pictures of gray skies over Los Angeles were a favored mechanism for scaring school kids about the dangers of air pollution, I was pleasantly surprised in moving to the Valley about four years ago to discover that I could actually see the sun most days of the year. Still, with Los Angeles rated as the top U.S. city for ozone levels and fourth highest for year-round particulates, those of us just over the hill from the city center are not yet in a position to breathe easily (literally or figuratively). Enter CSUN biology Professor Chhandak Basu and graduate student Niveditha Ramadoss. Working with colleagues from Washington University of St. Louis and University of California at Irvine, they are on the cutting edge of research in bioremediation, closing in on genetic plant transformations with substantial capability of absorbing environmental pollutants. Visionary CSUN engineering alumnus and entrepreneur Max Aram and his partner Chris Blevins launched Pick My Solar, a startup that is transforming how homeowners transition to solar energy, aided by skilled consulting from the globally ranked incubator LACI@CSUN. Meanwhile, concerned citizens in Pacoima Beautiful, a resident-driven environmental non-profit organization, have won Environmental Protection Agency support and acknowledgement for their socially innovative program of signage alerting truck drivers to residential route restrictions and communication campaigns informing areas business of environmentally friendly practices and residents of health impacts and protective strategies for living in high-emission areas. Another area of universal concern with promising solutions emerging from local initiatives is cancer research. CSUN chemistry and biochemistry Professor Paula Fischhaber and her students Lauryn Vartanian, Jimmy Guzman and Melin Babayan are engaged in promising research into the repair of double-strand breaks in DNA that cause chromosomal alternations leading to cancer. The fourth-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States is the focus of groundbreaking work by biology Professor Jonathan Kelber and his students Sa La Kim, Armen Gharibi, Yvess Adamian, David Brambilla, Malachia Hoover, Joy Lin, Megan Agajanian and Laurelin Wolfenden, who have identified a novel biomarker and therapeutic target for blocking stemness in pancreatic cancer. Elsewhere in the community, Immunocellular Therapeutics Ltd., a Calabasas firm, is testing multiple immunotherapies targeting brain and ovarian cancers and other tumors, some in advanced research stages. Having spent countless hours in my youth transfixed by the wondrous developments and discoveries of early space exploration, I was excited to learn of the ingenious work of CSUN biology Professor Rachel Mackelprang and her students Alex Burkert and Tara Mahendrarajah. Experts in the futuristic field of astrobiology, they tackle questions such as what life might look like in the frozen environments that prevail in most extra-terrestrial environments and what strategies allow survival through time in such forbidding conditions by analyzing microbial communities in Alaskan permafrost. Such work dovetails well with, and has rich potential to inform, that of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which is front and center in the robotic exploration of Mars and the outer reaches of the solar system. The infrastructure already exists to help brilliant innovators move their findings to commercialization in such incubators as LACI@CSUN and the Pasadena Bioscience Collaborative. The San Fernando Valley and its environs may not be the source of the next generation of mousetrap, but don’t be surprised if home-grown discoveries fuel the innovations that clean our environment, lengthen or lives and propel us to the discovery of life beyond our planet. To Life! Kenneth R. Lord is dean of the David Nazarian College of Business and Economics at California State University – Northridge.