"It's something that we in Kentucky can be good at. Alltech President Pearse Lyons was explaining why he had just handed over to UK President Lee Todd a check in the amount of $900,000 in support of a partnership to study nutrigenomics, the science of how nutrition affects gene expression in animals — specifically, the hoofed and beaked sort of Kentucky's agriculture economy.
"Only five years ago, mankind built the human genome. And yet in the last 60 months, we've now built virtually all the genes for all animals," said the founder of the Nicholasville-based international biotechnology company. "This includes the Gluck Research Center, which has just completed the gene for horses. We need a place to study this. Hence we are building, in conjunction with the University of Kentucky, the first-ever animal nutrigenomics center. We will have scientists literally from all over the world coming here."
UK and Alltech collaborations have been going on for 22 of the company's 27 years in business and include more than 33 broad research programs producing numerous publications and many graduate student theses and dissertations. Alltech scientists have joined the UK faculty in adjunct or visiting scholar positions. The Alltech/UK Poultry Nutrition Alliance at Coldstream has resulted in more than 40 research projects since 2004 involving company and university scientists as well as UK graduate students.
Uniting academic research with commercial applications is an imperative for UK President Lee Todd as he strives to meet a challenging 1997 legislative mandate to lead the university into the exclusive club of top American research institutions by 2020. "Kentucky is pushing us to have a higher enrollment and have a stronger graduate program toward this top 20 mission," he said after accepting the Alltech check. "This is an opportunity for us to show that we're open to working with industry. We have to lower our ivy walls and get out there and get our hands dirty doing things that really do create an economy."
According to a press statement from the university, the Alltech grant will support placement of UK College of Agriculture faculty and students at Alltech's new state-of-the-art $20 million, 20,000-square-foot Center for Animal Nutrigenomics and Applied Animal Nutrition. The lab, slated to open in early 2008, will house studies of how nutritional factors affect the expression of proteins and metabolites in animals and how diet impacts an animal's immune function. "What this does for students is allow them access to cutting edge biological and computational science, and it also exposes them to the commercial way of thinking. So, they're getting the best of both worlds," said Nancy Cox, associate dean for research, UK College of Agriculture.
Echoing Lyons' thoughts about the advantages of building on your strengths, Todd recalled a remark by IBM CEO Sam Palmisano, heard during a trip to Rome: ""It's no longer good enough to be faster than your competitor or just somewhat better than your competitor, because the way the world is moving now, in six months they'll be moving faster and better than you were. What you have got to do is be unique and to find the space where you can play, where you have an opportunity to protect that space for a period of time."
Cox said potential benefits from the collaboration could include boosting the productivity of food animals, making performance animals such as horses more competitive and even helping pets become healthier.
For a company that thinks and acts globally — with 1,800 employees in 85 countries — Alltech also acts locally. The company has become a major supporter of local efforts ranging from a national opera competition at UK to sponsorship of the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games 2010.