Page 52 - Gates-AnnualReport-2019

OUTREACH
(Left to right) Chancellor Don Elliman and Debbie and President Mark Kennedy tour the Gates Biomanufacturing Facility in July 2019.
While overall Gates Center activity progressed on campus during 2019, extensive time and effort focused on expanding our reach – particularly introducing ourselves and our services to the public, researchers, elected officials and students. As we worked to prepare for relocating our Gates Center offices and labs to an adjacent building in 2020, many of these activities took place in our affiliated and increasingly humming Gates Biomanufacturing Facility (GBF).
Highlights of 2019 included having CU President Mark Kennedy and his wife Debbie honor us with their presence for a briefing and tour of the GBF on President Kennedy’s first day on the job (see photos on the inside cover of this report and in this section). One of only two stops on the Anschutz Medical Campus included in the President’s whirlwind four- campus visit, the facility provided an appropriate backdrop for Professor of Pediatrics Terry Fry, M.D. to explain cell-
based therapies for children with cancer. Terry, who has been working closely with the GBF to prepare for clinical trials planned to start in 2020 (see article on page 42), joined the School of Medicine from the National Cancer Institute in 2018, as one of the first scientists to investigate the potential to insert modified genes into a child’s own T-cells to target CD19, a surface protein found on nearly all cells affected by acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
In addition to hosting on-and-off campus researchers and clinicians who might benefit from the Gates Center and the GBF’s efforts to accelerate research toward clinical trials and patient benefit, the Gates center welcomed a far-flung group of Deans from five Indonesian universities. Guests of the Center of Global Health at the University of Colorado’s School of Public Health, they are involved in a project geared toward improving Indonesian academic faculty capacity through training to initiate and conduct high-quality research and to link Indonesian and CU Anschutz faculty to carry out collaborative studies. They are also our long-distance-award winners for 2019 (see photo).
52 Gates Center for Regenerative Medicine
Dean John Reilly, Director of Quality Chris Garbe and Congresswoman Diana DeGette observe the bioreactor in which protein biologics are manufactured for human clinical trials.