St. John's News

Since September 2005, Professor Diana Bartelt has been spending her sabbatical research leave engaged in cutting edge cancer research at OSI Pharmaceuticals in Melville, Long Island. At the invitation of Dr. Neil Gibson, the Chief Scientific Officer at OSI, she has been rotating through departments in OSI Leads Discovery division, assisting in the identification of target proteins or genes known to be involved in the progression of some cancers of the pancreas, lung and liver. 

Committed to “shaping medicines and changing lives,” OSI is involved in discovering, developing and commercializing high-quality and novel pharmaceutical products that extend life or improve the quality of life for patients with cancer, eye diseases and diabetes. Professor Bartelt, who is Director of the Institute for Biotechnology and Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at St. John’s, has already spent time in Protein Production, where she made a target protein to be tested against a library of 350,000 different compounds. Now moved on to High Through-put screening, she is working to screen these compounds for the ability to inhibit another protein target. 

She marvels at the technology available at the pharmaceutical company, calling it “fabulous, unbelievable.”

For 2006, Professor Bartelt explains, about a dozen protein targets have been selected for further testing. Because confidentiality is critical in this kind of research, she notes, she had to check whether OSI’s confidentiality and patent agreements conflicted with those at St. John’s before she could join the pharmaceutical company’s research team.

Additionally, the St. John’s researcher has been advocating for a more formal relationship between the University and the pharmaceutical company, and she reports that several agreements with OSI are “in the works.” Since September, she has been working with OSI’s Vice President of Cancer Chemistry, Dr. Lee Arnold and the Assistant Director of Cancer Chemistry, Dr. Mark Mulvihill to create summer internships--both graduate and undergraduate--for St. John’s students.

To date, OSI has committed to one undergraduate intern in Chemistry for the summer of 2006. The company would also look to St. John’s for students in other majors--such as business--to work in other areas at OSI and has expressed a particular interest in recruiting Pharmacy majors and graduate students in “medicinal chemistry” for permanent employment.

“Most exciting,” Professor Bartelt says, is OSI’s proposal to set up “studentships,” in which students would perform the concluding steps in experiments started by scientists in OSI’s laboratories, under the watchful eyes of faculty in the labs at St. John’s. Both the students and faculty providing this valuable service would be listed as co-authors, along with the OSI scientists, of the published piece.  “It’s a very inviting idea,” she comments. Dr. Arnold has just committed to sponsoring two such agreements in chemistry for the summer of 2006.

Despite the intricate work she is performing at OSI, Professor Bartelt remains connected to the University. With Assistant Professor Marc Gillespie of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, who is serving as Interim Director of the Institute for Biotechnology, she continues to shepherd a proposal to create a Professional Science Masters degree in Biological and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, which will be offered jointly by the College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Professions and St. John’s College, through the required approval process. The courses in this new degree consolidate those in both the M.S. in Biological Sciences with a concentration in Biotechnology and the M.S. in Pharmaceutical Sciences with specialization in Biotechnology that are currently offered. In December, the new degree was approved by the University’s Board of Trustees and will soon be submitted to the New York State Department of Education, the final step in the process. Professor Bartelt estimates that the new degree could be offered as soon as fall 2006 and assures that courses taken in the current degree programs will be fully credited to the new degree.

Also in the planning stage is an Institute for Biotechnology Colloquium for the local biotechnology industry, which will be sponsored by OSI and consist of three or four lectures by outstanding scientists, during the next year.

What is Biotechnology?
The Houghton Mifflin dictionary defines biotechnology as “the use of microorganisms--such as bacteria or yeasts--or biological substances--such as enzymes--to perform specific industrial or manufacturing processes.”

What is the Institute for Biotechnology at St. John’s?
The Institute is an administrative arm of the Provost’s Office. It was created to administer programs in Biotechnology that are offered jointly by more than one academic unit.

What are the opportunities for students who study Biotechnology?
While enrolled in a master’s program in Biotechnology at St. John’s, students can qualify for internships with companies like OSI Pharmaceuticals, Estee Lauder, Inc., AGI Dermatics, Pall Corporation, Glia Med Inc. and InGenious Targeting Laboratory, among others. After graduation, they can expect to enter a job market in which, according to Time (May 22, 2000), “five of the hottest employment markets will be biologically based jobs.”