Dr. Josep Bassaganya-Riera

BLACKSBURG, Va., October 14, 2008 - A new company is being created as a spin-off from Virginia Tech to develop nutritional interventions against chronic inflammatory and infectious diseases. BioTherapeutics Inc. will promote health and well-being through the discovery and development of nutraceuticals - naturally occurring molecules that can be integrated into nutritional products and functional food ingredients. BioTherapeutics Inc. was newly incorporated in August, 2008, with the purpose of introducing novel Virginia Tech-developed nutraceutical technologies into the marketplace. The company was founded by Dr. Josep Bassaganya-Riera, Associate Professor at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech, who has more than 15 years experience working at the interface between immunology and nutrition. 

BLACKSBURG, Va., September 23, 2008 – The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a four-year, $1,000,000 grant to the Network Dynamics and Simulation Science Laboratory (NDSSL) at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech to develop high-performance computer modeling tools for wireless telecommunication networks. The NDSSL will work with the State University of New York at Stony Brook and Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs to develop models and algorithms that support the work of policy- and decision-makers who want to design efficient wireless spectrum markets.

Newsletter of the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute

Contents:

• Barrett gives talk at international symposium
  
• Invitrogen spectrometer donation helps student training
• In The News
  
• Cortes makes the transition from research assistant to postdoctoral work

Barrett gives talk at international symposium
Chris Barrett, Director of the Network Dynamics and Simulation Science Laboratory at VBI, gives keynote lecture at the Eighteenth International Symposium on Mathematical Theory of Networks and Systems.

Invitrogen spectrometer donation helps student training
VBI Assistant Professor Iuliana Lazar receives an equipment donation from Invitrogen to help train undergraduate and graduate students.

Alternaria alternata

BLACKSBURG, Va., September 2, 2008 - A new study shows that the innate immune system of humans is capable of killing a fungus linked to airway inflammation, chronic rhinosinusitis and bronchial asthma. Researchers at Mayo Clinic and the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech have revealed that eosinophils, a particular type of white blood cell, exert a strong immune response against the environmental fungus Alternaria alternata. The groundbreaking findings, which shed light on some of the early events involved in the recognition of A. alternata by the human immune system, were published recently in the Journal of Immunology*.