Immunology

Researchers from three leading Chicago-area research universities to benefit from pact

As research funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other federal agencies shrinks, cooperation among Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago is expanding.

With the strokes of three pens, Northwestern, UChicago and UIC launched an unusual -- perhaps unique -- collaborative venture by forming a core research facilities partnership. The universities’ provosts recently signed an agreement for “open access to research core facilities.” Simply put: there is no extra fee now to use each other’s fancy instruments.

The agreement builds on an existing partnership between the three universities focused on biomedical research: the Chicago Biomedical Consortium (CBC), established in 2006 with the mission of stimulating collaboration among scientists at the three institutions.

“It is creative and deep partnerships like ours that foster a real community and keep Chicago competitive as a research hub,” said Jay Walsh, vice president for research at Northwestern. “Federal research funding has been largely stagnant for about a decade, but our three institutions are doing well, in part because of strategic alliances with each other and with other regional research affiliates. This agreement is about reducing costs and increasing the availability of state-of-the-art research facilities.”

The pioneering memorandum of understanding (MOU) allows researchers from the three schools access to a partner’s instrumentation and expertise at no additional charge for an outside user (facilities and administration costs). Essentially, a research team now could have up to 60 percent more research dollars in its pocket than before when using a partner’s facility.

The long-term strength of the pact is to give researchers more choices of facilities right in the Chicago area. Faculty, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students already are taking advantage of resources located at the partner institutions, with no campus more than an hour’s drive away. 

A UChicago biochemist has been using Northwestern’s High Throughput Analysis Laboratory, for example, to develop new cancer therapies using small molecules and a novel concept. A Northwestern materials scientist is taking advantage of UIC’s $3 million scanning transmission electron microscope to investigate the surface structure, at atomic resolution, in certain nanocubes.

Such cooperation across institutions leads to collaboration and additional research funding, which in turn leads to more jobs for the Chicago area as well as the promise of research breakthroughs that could lead to clinical trials and, ultimately, improved health care.