Max Planck lands in Jupiter

Photo credit: Berger, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen, Germany

The addition of the Max Planck Florida Institute gives Florida’s Palm Beach County cachet in the world of biomedical research. It also shows a significant investment in scientific research after a long U.S. dry spell.

Photo caption: Isolated nerve cell. Max Planck scientists have developed a new tool to visualize molecular processes in an isolated nerve cell under an electron microscope by using fluorescent reporter proteins. Synaptic activity regulates the local protein synthesis. Changes in activity and the resulting molecular changes could be responsible for the reorganization and stabilization of synapses. The scientists found evidence that this could be the molecular basis of learning.

Germany’s prestigious Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science took another step forward in solidifying its U.S. presence by naming of Bert Sakmann, MD, PhD, as the first scientific director of the Max Planck Florida Institute. The Munich-based Max Planck Society is opening a 100,000 square foot biomedical research facility at the Florida Atlantic University in Jupiter, Florida in 2011.

Sakmann, currently with the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Munich, received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1991 for his co-discovery of the single channel of cells. He was previously the director at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg.

Under Sakmann’s direction, the Max Planck Florida Institute  will focus on bioimaging and translating basic research discoveries into clinical and patient applications. One focus area will be studying the cerebral cortex of mice as a foundation for future studies on degenerative brain degenerative diseases.

Palm Beach County Commissioners voted in 2008 to bring the Max Planck Society to Jupiter, and along with the state, has committed about $94 million to the project. Jupiter is already home to Scripps Florida, a biomedical research facility and a division of the Scripps Research Institute headquartered in California. The addition of Max Planck is expected to further elevate the area’s bioscience profile and bring as many as 1,800 new jobs over the next two decades, new educational opportunities, and generate about $2 billion in economic activity.

The Institute has a temporary home at Florida Atlantic University's MacArthur campus beginning this summer as it awaits completion of the permanent facility in 2011.

Is Max Planck important in the international research arena? Very.

The Society, funded largely by the governments in Germany and other European countries, maintains 80 institutes, research centers and working groups devoted to cutting-edge research in, for example, the structure of matter, the function of the nervous system, and the birth and development of stars and galaxies. The Florida facility will be its fourth international institute and its first in the United States.