Biomedicine and Engineering Advances

Maine has nationally competitive expertise in basic biomedical research and a wide range of academic and healthcare institutions involved in basic and applied research. Their collective strengths and accomplishments create a unique set of opportunities. Maine’s small population, served by a relatively small number of healthcare providers, suggests that collaboration and outreach will be necessary to engage patient populations in unique research initiatives.

Goal 1: Research Objective
Expand the application of precision medicine, biomedical data science, and genetic modeling of human disease.

Goal 2: Enterprise Objective
Continue generating the biomedical discoveries and expertise that have helped launch multiple spin-off companies in Maine. Make strategic investments to increase access to research infrastructure and incentivize the formation of strategic research clusters .

Goal 3: Workforce Objective
Continue generating Maine expertise in the fields of cancer, genomics, neurobiology, host-pathogen interactions, computational biology and bioinformatics, aging, addiction, metabolism, and renal disease through postbaccalaureate, graduate, and post-doctoral research training .

Goal 4: Climate Change Objective
Mitigate climate change enabled increased risk to infectious diseases (e.g, Lyme disease, West Nile virus)

Maine has a strong biomedical research community and strategic investments in R&D will accelerate basic knowledge of human disease needed to improve the health and well-being of the state and nation . There are several research institutions in the research community that continue to build the critical research infrastructure to attract and retain scientists . Each institution has numerous strengths and accomplishments that, together, present Maine with a unique set of opportunities. Maine is home to four Centers of Excellence in Biomedical Research (COBREs) funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). They focus on: 1) mesenchymal and neural regulation of metabolic networks (MaineHealth Institute for Research); 2) comparative biology, regeneration and aging (Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory); 3) neurobiology of pain and sensory function (University of New England); and 4) acute care research and rural disparities (MaineHealth Institute for Research). COBRE are infrastructure building grants that focus on building a critical mass of workforce (faculty, student trainees), as well as research cores/instrumentation to support the research themes. Maine’s COBREs are highly collaborative and provide important biomedical research infrastructure to the state. The Northern New England Clinical and Translational Research Center is an NIH-funded center focused on building clinical research infrastructure in Maine and Vermont. The Jackson Laboratory, a National Cancer Institute-designated basic laboratory cancer center since 1983, is focused on deciphering the complex genetics of cancer and to design precision models of the disease.

Along with nationally competitive expertise in basic biomedical research, Maine has a wide-ranging inventory of academic and healthcare institutions involved in applied research aimed at vulnerable populations and rural health.

Precision Medicine

The National Institutes of Health launched the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) in 2016 that seeks to develop genetically targeted therapies.

Concurrent with PMI is the rapid adoption of pharmacogenomics in countries such as the United Kingdom. Maine has opportunities to contribute to this research since it has a relatively small population, and few pathology providers and healthcare organizations. Collaborations between researchers and these providers may be easier to form.

Research on precision medicine seeks to develop diagnostics and treatments that are customized to individual patients through programs at specific healthcare organizations. For example, Maine Health Info Net collaborates with all major healthcare providers in Maine to provide centralized health records that could be used for research. Cancer, discussed below, is a specific disease that can be treated with precision medicine, but this approach can be applied to many others, including chronic renal disease, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

Cancer is the leading cause of death in Maine (Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019) and basic oncology research would eventually lead to improved outcomes. While many factors contribute to the high cancer mortality rates, increasing screening for cancer has been a goal within the Maine Cancer Plan. For example, Maine has a lung cancer mortality rate of 60% that is higher than the national rate for white males. Increasingly inexpensive sequencing technologies could be used to screen large numbers of individuals. Low-cost diagnostics would address socioeconomic barriers to healthcare that exist in Maine. With appropriate funding, it may eventually be possible to screen every willing Maine resident and providing earlier opportunities to treat disease through:

Low-cost sequencing techniques allowing for screening of disease-causing variants
Tissue sampling that can occur at community hospitals or related sites
Studies being done through the Jackson Laboratory (JAX) as part of the Maine Cancer Genomics Initative Genome Wide Association of chronic renal disease at Northern Light Clinical Research Center

Data Sciences

The promise of personalized medicine, in which diagnostics and treatments are tailored to an individual patient’s genome, is helping drive an expansion in the sequencing, storage, and analysis of human genetic information. International genomics database consortia [1, 2], federally- directed research projects [3], independent efforts by biomedical institutions [4], and a growing market of consumer-based genomics test products [5] are driving an increase in the number, size, and utilization of human genomic data sets for biomedical investigation. With an explosion of independent international collections of genomic data, each with thousands of individual exomes or whole genomes, biomedical research requires data science methods to extrapolate meaning from the “big data” available today. Data science will apply computational methods, including artificial intelligence and machine learning to generate novel biological insights, validated by genetic models of human disease .

Genetic Models of Human Disease

Maine researchers have a long history of developing animal models of human disease and providing those resources to global research communities.

Major model organisms include the mouse, zebrafish, and the roundworm (C. elegans) . These animal models are genetically tractable in that several methods can be used to engineer mutations that mimic those found in humans. Many mouse models of human disease — over 13,000 strains that comprise the largest repository of mouse genetics in the world — have been designed and made available by JAX over several decades.

More recently, methods to produce populations of outbred mice have been developed by JAX that are susceptible to different complex diseases similar to what occurs human populations. Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory (MDIBL) is currently developing ways to use marine animal models for drug testing, providing a unique and valuable resource for Maine.

Research Infrastructure

Maine needs more research infrastructure to conduct basic biomedical research and clinical and translational research. Examples of the types of research infrastructure include the following:

High-throughput DNA sequencing and analysis capacity
High-resolution imaging capacity
Robust infrastructure for stable storage, management, and controlled sharing of laboratory data
BioBanks

Maine also needs to leverage existing resources where possible through effective collaborations in the following areas:

Biomedical research expertise in computational biology and bioinformatics
Northern Light Cancer Care BioBank
MaineHealth Institute for Research BioBank – more than 50,000 samples from cancer and inflammatory disease surgeries.
Clinical Trials Infrastructure — MaineHealth Institute for Research, NNE-CTR and others
Maine Health Info Net — centralized electronic health records from the major healthcare providers in Maine.

Strengthen state-wide and regional research collaborative networks

Statewide Networks
Maine INBRE Network
University of Maine Graduate School for Biomedical Science and Engineering
Maine Cancer Genomics Initiative
Maine’s Impact Cancer Network — Maine’s Comprehensive Cancer Control program

Regional Networks and Collaborations

Northern New England Clinical and Translational Research Network

Northern Light Health Cancer Center partnership with Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Acute Care Rural Health — MHIR, UNE
Addiction — JAX, UMaine
Aging — JAX, MDIBL, UMaine
Biomedical Workforce and Leveraging Expertise in the Maine
Cancer — JAX, MaineHealth, Northern Light
Computational biology and bioinformatics — JAX, UMaine, MDIBL, Roux Institute
Expertise in host-pathogen interactions — UMaine, MaineHealth Institute for Research
Metabolism — MaineHealth Institute for Research (MHIR), UNE, JAX
Neurobiology/ Neurodegeneration/Pain — JAX, UMaine, Northern Light, UNE
Renal Disease — JAX, MDIBL, UMaine

Economic Impact

Biomedical research is a growing and resilient sector of the Maine economy. When the COVID-19 pandemic caused certain sectors of the economy to severely contract, the biomedical research and development services sector expanded. Maine biomedical research institutions attract significant economic resources to the state through federal research grants and revenue generated through unique biomedical research products and services. From 2017 to 2021, Maine institutions received over $515 million in competitive NIH awards. From 2001 to 2021, the top three patent holders in Maine are all biomedical institutions (IDEXX Laboratories, The Jackson Laboratory, MaineHealth Institute for Research). Likewise, nearly all of Maine’s life science jobs are biomedical, in sectors including pharmaceutical and medical manufacturing, scientific research and development services, medical and diagnostics laboratories, and medical equipment and supplies manufacturing. These workers earn a median hourly wage of $31.05, 34% higher than the median hourly wage for all other occupations in Maine.

References

Genome Aggregation Database. https://gnomad. broadinstitute.org

UK Biobank. https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk

All of Us Research Program, National Institutes of Health. https://allofus.nih.gov

Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. https://victr.vumc.org

23andMe. https://www.23andme.com

Maine Department of Labor, Center for Workforce Research and Information

2022 State of the Industry, Biosciences Association of Maine