Baxter Healthcare will collaborate on early-stage discovery projects with Northwestern University's Institute for Bioengineering & Nanoscience in Advanced Medicine (IBNAM). All three are located in the greater Chicago area.

"Nanoscience and nanotechnologies hold incredible promise for medicine," says Norbert G. Riedel, Baxter's chief scientific officer. "This is an extension of our own work in the area of drug delivery and the design of highly sophisticated devices to improve patient therapies."

Under the agreement, Baxter will commit up to $450,000 annually over five years to support up to three postdoctoral researchers and four annual projects. The projects will focus on medical applications, such as the way therapies are targeted and administered in treating specific diseases. Northwestern will own all related intellectual property, while Baxter will have right of first refusal to exclusively license technologies generated by the collaborative research.

IBNAM, a partnership of Northwestern's Medical School, McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, and Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences, is meant to position the university as a key player in interdisciplinary bioengineering and nanoscience research. The first research teams--composed of two to three faculty and research staff members each--are being formed in an incubator program. The institute will be housed on two floors of Northwestern's new $200 million Robert H. Lurie Medical Research Center, scheduled for completion in early 2004.

Chemical & Engineering News
Copyright © 2002 American Chemical Society