NWUN visits to further partnership with USU
After their recent visit to USU, a delegation of Chinese scientists from Northwest University for Nationalities (NWUN) in Lanzhou, China, are expected to return again in December, expanding the notoriety of the Center for Integrated BioSystems (CIB) training on an international scale.
The scientists’ interest in USU’s CIB laboratory facility began last year, said CIB associate director Kamal Rashid, when a visiting scientist from NWUN spent a year at USU and grew interested in the center. They wanted to look further into efforts to provide training on bioreactors – vessels in which chemical processes are carried out.
Established in 1991, the Center for Integrated BioSystems (CIB) has been home to state-of-the art equipment for use in fermentation, protein purification, and cell culture. Not only do USU researchers use the equipment and receive training at the Center, but off-campus and industrial collaborators as well.
As a result of the international interest, a collaboration between NWUN and USU was formed that allows for faculty members from NWUN’s College of Life Science and Engineering to come to USU for hands-on training, and faculty members from USU’s BioSystems Center to go straight to NWUN to provide training. The Chinese delegation first visited USU in March and then again in September.
Ken White, the CIB’s Interim Director and department head for Animal, Dairy and Veterinary Sciences, associate director Rashid and a group that also included Afifa Sabir, education coordinator for the CIB, and Ben Sessions, Animal, Dairy and Veterinary Science laboratory manager, visited the campus in Lanzhou during the end of May and beginning of June. They gave classroom lectures and teach hands-on application of basic, scientific concepts in order to use a functioning bioreactor.
“The experience was very positive. They received us very well,” Rashid said.
The group also visited two vital vaccine facilities, one in Lanzhou and one in Urumqi, China. With more than 60 vaccine production sites in China, manufacturing could be made easier through the use of the bioreactors for which USU faculty members provide training.
“One of the things they’re concerned about is if they can produce adequate amounts of vaccines to prevent disease in millions and millions of people,” White said. “They’re looking at it from an animal standpoint and also human. They’re interested in what’s involved to rack up their capability with bioreactors.”
Interest in USU’s training is such that NWUN intends to establish laboratories and obtain equipment in China so that they may potentially have their own sister program to train scientists and increase vaccination production, Rashid said.
With the possibility of another delegation visiting this December, both White and Rashid agree that the Center’s influence is positive and widely successful, and that further collaboration is likely.
– ariwrees@gmail.com