The state's Biomedical Research Diamond universities highlight collaboration across Virginia's research enterprise.
30 Jun 2026
The next generation of medicine won’t be built around treating disease after it appears. It will be built around understanding precisely how disease develops — and predicting its course to enable precise interventions before it becomes irreversible.
That vision united researchers from Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Old Dominion University at the inaugural Biomedical Research Diamond symposium in Richmond, where scientists described advances spanning neuroscience, cancer, rare diseases, cardiovascular and metabolic health, immunology, artificial intelligence, and drug discovery.
Although the diseases differed, the scientific strategy was consistent: understand the biology, identify the mechanisms that drive disease — and those that promote health and longevity such as exercise and nutrition — and use that knowledge to develop more precise interventions at the molecular, cellular, and systems levels.
Anthony LaMantia of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC presented research that traces a genetic mutation associated with schizophrenia and autism to the brain circuits the mutation disrupts during development, identifying a way to restore healthy neural connections by activating an alternative biological pathway rather than correcting the original mutation.
In all, the presentations illustrated why Virginia’s leading research universities have chosen to work together.
Advances in biomedical research increasingly depend on expertise distributed across disciplines and institutions, combining basic science, engineering, computation, clinical research, and pharmaceutical development to move discoveries more efficiently toward patient care.
Frank Gupton, chair of pharmaceutical engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University; Michael Friedlander, executive director of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute an Virginia Tech vice president of health sciences and technology; Jason Powell, director of governmental affairs for the firm Hunton, Andrews Kurth; Chief External Affairs Jennifer Siciliano of UVA Health; Mark Esser, head of the UVA Paul and Diane Manning Institute for Biotechnology; and Eric Weisel, senior associate vice president for enterprise research and innovation at Old Dominion University.
“The challenges facing human health today are too complex for any one investigator or even any institution to solve alone,” said Michael Friedlander, executive director of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC and Virginia Tech vice president for health sciences and technology. “The Biomedical Research Diamond, and the commonwealth’s continued financial support and prioritization, reflects a shared commitment to bringing together expertise, infrastructure, and talent across Virginia’s leading research universities to accelerate discoveries that improve lives.
“There are scientific opportunities now that weren’t here 10 years ago for early-stage discovery, computational modeling, drug design, and running very informed trials that use biomarkers that enable strategic stratification of patients and higher success rates for clinical research outcomes,” Friedlander said.
Frank Gupton, chair of pharmaceutical engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University, where the symposium was hosted, said translating discoveries into therapies requires capabilities that no single institution possesses.
“Collectively, we have them all,” Gupton said.
Gupton said Virginia’s opportunity extends beyond discovery to one of the most difficult stages of biomedical innovation: translating promising laboratory findings into therapies that can reach patients.
“Discoveries can’t be laboratory curiosities,” he said. “They’ve got to be things that we can actually show a line of sight to commercialization.”
By combining expertise in basic science, engineering, clinical research, pharmaceutical development, and manufacturing, the Biomedical Research Diamond aims to bridge the gap between laboratory discovery to patient care.
Jason Powell, director of government affairs at Hunton Andrews Kurth and a former senior advisor in Virginia state government, said the partnership reflects years of evolving state investment in research.
Early efforts focused on strengthening individual universities, he said, but the Biomedical Research Diamond represents a shift toward supporting a coordinated statewide enterprise.
“The commonwealth has shown that it’s willing to be an investor and is looking for results that benefit the entirety of the commonwealth, and not just one university, because it’s Virginia versus the world,” Powell said.
The goal was to have a “single coordinated entity” capable of generating returns that no one university could achieve alone.
The effort grew from a recognition that Virginia already possesses internationally recognized strengths in biomedical research, engineering, clinical medicine, biotechnology, and data science.
The partnership seeks to connect those capabilities, creating a statewide research enterprise to move discoveries more efficiently from laboratory science to patient care.
The collaboration also represents a shift in how Virginia’s universities work together.
“What we’ve seen is a transition from those relationship-based collaborations to more institutional collaborations,” said Eric Weisel, senior associate vice president for enterprise research and innovation at Old Dominion University. “Institutional collaboration is what’s going to allow us to compete with other states.”
Mark Esser, chief scientific officer of the University of Virginia’s Manning Institute for Biotechnology, said the partnership is ultimately about people. After 25 years in the pharmaceutical industry, he has watched companies search the world for the scientists and entrepreneurs who drive biomedical innovation.
“The name of the game is talent,” Esser said.
Virginia already educates many of those people, Esser said, but too many leave the commonwealth after graduation. Building a stronger biomedical research and biotechnology ecosystem will help keep that talent in Virginia while strengthening the nation’s ability to compete globally.
“This isn’t just about competition within the state,” Esser said. “This is really about national security and national economic security.”
John Pastor
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