NEWS

Van Andel Institute Brings Cancer Research to the Heartland

Ken Garber

Perched on a hill in downtown Grand Rapids, Mich., the Van Andel Institute enjoys a privileged view of the city. But, to many cancer biologists on the coasts, the building might just as well be at the North Pole.



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The main building of the Van Andel Institute sits on 2.7 acres in Grand Rapids, Mich. It houses 14,000 square feet of laboratory space, 42,000 square feet of laboratory support, and an auditorium that seats 350 people. A second phase of construction, which will roughly triple the amount of laboratory space, is scheduled for 2003 or 2004.

 
Grand Rapids, a city of 193,000 in the western part of the state, has no medical school, no research university, and no biotech industry. The $60 million institute, with its futuristic stepped profile featuring glass-covered laboratories stretching half a city block, was funded entirely by Jay Van Andel, co-founder of Amway, the famous direct sales company based nearby.

That the Van Andel Research Institute, one of two branches of VAI, aspires to research greatness in a region best known for furniture and fruit might have become a joke were it not for its director, George Vande Woude, Ph.D., whose accomplishments over a 28-year career at the National Cancer Institute inspire respectful awe.



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Dr. George Vander Woude

 
"We want to see [the VARI become] a Salk Institute," Vande Woude said, referring to the prolific La Jolla center that jumpstarted San Diego’s now-thriving research/biotech community. When the VARI ultimately achieves "world-class" status, Vande Woude expects it to house 70 principal investigators and hundreds of scientists. "We’ll have an impact," he said confidently.

Vande Woude has already recruited an initial group of 15 principal investigators, mostly young scientists from well-known laboratories. That’s partly from necessity—few senior scientists will move to Grand Rapids—and partly by design. Young scientists are more collaborative and "more fearless," said Vande Woude. "They have to start from scratch anyway."

For example, Bart Williams, Ph.D., came from the NCI laboratory of former National Institutes of Health director Harold Varmus, M.D. "I got called one day and asked if I wanted to go to Michigan," Williams, 31, recalled. The decision was easy. "If you have kids, you can’t easily live on a postdoc’s salary, or even an assistant professor’s salary, on the east or west coasts," he said. (He has three children.) "That, and the fact that you can come in and have good resources—not outrageous, but good—allows you to have two postdocs and no grant pressure to write your RO1s immediately."

Another young scientist who found the VARI too good to pass up was Cindy Miranti, Ph.D., who came from the Harvard laboratory of well-known cancer biologist Joan Brugge, Ph.D. Vande Woude offered her "everything the NIH offered and more," Miranti said.

"Here they give you an annual budget, to support you and two others, a great startup package, no teaching responsibility, and 5 years to establish yourself." Vande Woude’s presence was key. "George has a high success rate," Miranti said. "I don’t see how this place can fail."

Miranti was born in Ann Arbor, Mich., and knew the state was not a cultural and scientific wasteland. But that’s what many colleagues assumed. "People on the east coast, they thought George was a fool," she said. "Why would he come here? But when they come here [to visit], they’re impressed."

Why did Vande Woude give up his lofty position directing the NCI’s Division of Basic Sciences (the largest basic science organization in the world) for the VARI job? He is oblique on this subject, but Vande Woude had few worlds left to conquer at NIH. He made his scientific reputation in the 1970s by revealing the oncogenic potential of long terminal repeat DNA elements in retroviruses.

Then, in the mid-1980s, his laboratory cloned the gene for Met, one of the early oncogenes, and later in the decade, together with Stuart Aaronson, M.D., found its ligand. In the early 1990s Vande Woude’s laboratory showed that cells transformed by Met became highly invasive and metastatic, and Met is now an important anticancer drug target.

In 1983 Vande Woude took the helm at the NCI’s Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center and led it for 15 years. He had already run an institute, noted Michael Brown, M.D., a member of the VARI scientific advisory board. "So we knew he had the ability to recruit and motivate young scientists."

Vande Woude took the VARI job in April 1998. "The question I’m always asked is why I would choose to do this," he said. "There were many reasons. One is roots. I was probably the only [candidate] who knew where Grand Rapids was." Vande Woude’s great-grandparents, who immigrated from the Netherlands in the 19th century, were early European settlers in the area. Vande Woude’s father grew up in Holland, Mich., 22 miles away, and Vande Woude (a native New Yorker) spent a year at Holland’s Hope College in the 1950s before joining the Army.

Vande Woude tackled the VARI challenge with the same energy he demonstrated at the NCI. He has already established core services in monoclonal antibody production, cytogenetics and genotyping, protein arrays, transgenic mice, imaging, and histology, with more cores on the way. He has negotiated resource-sharing agreements with the three universities that are part of Michigan’s "Life Sciences Corridor," a biomedical initiative financed by the state’s share of the national tobacco lawsuit settlement.

And Vande Woude recently recruited Sara Courtneidge, Ph.D., an expert in the discovery and validation of anti-cancer drug targets, to serve as deputy director. Construction of a second phase of VARI’s buildings, which will roughly triple the amount of laboratory space, is scheduled for 2003 or 2004. "We’ll continue to grow," assured Vande Woude.

While grants and gifts will eventually make up more than half the institute’s annual budget (currently about $12 million), so far almost all its funding has come from the Jay and Betty Van Andel Foundation. Jay Van Andel, who co-founded Amway in 1959, conceived the project after his wife’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in the late 1980s and his own subsequent battle with Parkinson’s disease. Vande Woude’s recruitment led to an initial focus on cancer, but infectious diseases and neurological disorders may be addressed in the future.

The VARI seems an unlikely legacy for Van Andel, 77, an active political conservative and devout Christian who openly professes fundamentalist beliefs and distrust of conventional medicine. For example, his foundation also funds the (much smaller) Van Andel Creation Research Center in Arizona, which aims "to challenge the theory of evolution at the technical level" and promote "creation evangelism," according to its Web site.

The Van Andel family’s belief system has led some to question whether the VARI’s scientific integrity could be compromised. (Van Andel’s son, David Van Andel, is the VAI’s chairman and CEO.) "People always ask, do they have a role in making decisions about what direction we [pursue]," said Vande Woude. "They have not. They have only been very supportive."



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David Van Andel

 
"They’ve put no constraints on the type of science that is done," concurred Nobel laureate Brown. "There’s an interest in excellence; as far as I can tell that’s their only motivation."

The Van Andel family has made a long-term commitment. "When Mr. and Mrs. Van Andel both pass away, the bulk of their estate will become the permanent endowment for the institute," said Casey Wondergem, VARI’s vice president for communications and development. Given that Forbes recently estimated Jay Van Andel’s personal wealth at $1.4 billion, the VARI seems financially secure. And, with Vande Woude as director, its scientific prospects look good. Asked if he intends to finish his career in Grand Rapids, Vande Woude replied, "Well, I don’t think we’re ready to move again."



             
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