Cures take collaboration: and some good galoshes.

• Position: RESEARCH NORTH CAROLINA: UNC GREENSBORO

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UNC Greensboro laboratories extend far beyond campus borders. Faculty, students and staff are translating research into practice and placing a premium on economic and community partnerships to create collective impact. From incubating innovation in the heart of the city to discovering drugs in nature, UNCG researchers and their partners have their feet firmly planted in the real world.

> New drugs in nature

At the UNCG Natural Products and Drug Discovery Center, white, fluffy Penicillium restrictum sits in a petri dish. The fungus has adorned itself with red, jewel-like droplets of liquid. Within these droplets is the compound omega-hydroxyemodin--OHM--which may be the next lead against drug-resistant bacterial infections.

Researchers at the center have found OHM inhibits the virulence of drug-resistant staph infections in mice--giving mouse immune systems the time they need to fight off the aggressive bacterial invaders.

But the OHM finding is itself just a droplet in the center s world of data and discovery. The center boasts a library of more than 900 fungi --many existing nowhere else in the world--that produce well over 10,000 different chemical compounds. UNCG scientists work daily to isolate and identify these compounds with the goal of developing new treatments for infectious disease and cancer.

The center's Triad Mass Spectrometry Facility, representing a collection of equipment and expertise unique in the Southeast, helps these scientists accomplish what few others can and has quickly garnered the center a national reputation for excellence in cutting edge natural products and medicinal chemistry research.

The latest result of that reputation and hard work is a collaboration with the University of Washington and Washington State University to establish an NIH Center of Excellence for Natural Product Drug Interaction Research. UNCG, which serves as the analytical core of the partnership, is specifically taking aim at one of the largest limitations to natural products research--inconsistencies in sample quality and methods that can produce inconsistent data. The new study will establish a set of best practices for future clinical trials of dietary supplements.

> Innovating downtown

In 2014, UNCG Associate Vice Chancellor for Economic Engagement Bryan Toney introduced Greensboro serial entrepreneur and developer Andy Zimmerman to Christopher Gergen, a founding partner of HQ Raleigh, the capital's shared...