Ride For Life: Prominent lab shutting down

By Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News March 27, 2003

The Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, a Denver landmark and a key player in the mapping of the human genome, is shutting its doors after 41 years, a victim of the sluggish economy and the war on terrorism.

"(Sept. 11, 2001) was a pretty devastating thing to us," Don Yale, chairman of the board of trustees, said Wednesday. "That year donations were down. This past year, they've picked back up, but now research grants are getting more problematic."

ERI's revenue was $4.467 million, with roughly one-third coming from philanthropy, and expenses were $4.348 million, according to ERI's 2001 annual report.

Funding from the National Institutes of Health is up nationally, "but a lot of that is going to bioterrorism, and that's not a field we're in."

The institute, which employs 50 people at East 19th Avenue and Gaylord Street, does cutting-edge research on Lou Gehrig's disease, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, Down syndrome, autism, cancer, diabetes and other illnesses.

In 2000, ERI was the first research lab in the world to map gene sequences on chromosome 21, home to mutated genes that cause many of those diseases.

"It's a big loss - a major loss for Denver and the scientific community," said geneticist David Patterson, president of ERI, who estimated that it would close within six months.

Named after the former first lady and originally funded by her family, ERI had 11 scientists in the mid-1990s, but now has seven.

"Unless we get an angel with $2 million, I suspect our scientists are going to find a lab that would love to have them, and move on," Patterson said.

For a year and a half, the board tried diligently to find such an angel, Yale said. "It just didn't happen. It's a shame because the Eleanor Roosevelt Institute has been a jewel for Denver."

Independent labs, without large universities to turn to during lulls in funding, are hurting financially, Yale said. ERI pursued university affiliations, but higher education is suffering its own funding slump.

ERI was founded by Theodore Puck, a Denver researcher who in the 1950s developed somatic cell techniques, paving the way for modern human genetics research.

In 1977, Puck led a team that developed revolutionary radiation and chemotherapy methods for treating tumors more safely and accurately.

In 1987, ERI scientists in collaboration with scientists from around the world identified the first gene, on chromosome 21, shown to cause hereditary Alzheimer's disease.