Flotte Named Director Of UF Genetics Institute

December 7, 2000

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Dr. Terence R. Flotte has been named director of the University of Florida Genetics Institute, a position he has held in an interim capacity for nearly two years, Provost David Colburn announced today. The appointment is effective immediately.

“The University of Florida is delighted that Dr. Terry Flotte has committed to staying here and to heading up our genetics initiative,” Colburn said. “The program has expanded dramatically under Terry’s leadership, and we look forward to building this interdisciplinary effort into one of the core programs on this campus. Our aim is to conduct pioneering research that will help address the needs of Floridians and Americans generally.”

Flotte began as the institute’s interim director in February 1999 and was the founding director on the Board of Regents’ application for the establishment of the institute, which was approved in May 1999.

“I am grateful for the opportunity to work with the outstanding group of scientists from IFAS, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Health Science Center in the Genetics Institute here at UF. Our success in acquiring new federal research grants has been very gratifying,” said Flotte, an associate professor of pediatrics and molecular genetics and microbiology in UF’s College of Medicine.

Flotte also is director of UF’s Powell Gene Therapy Center, and assistant director of the General Clinical Research Center in UF’s College of Medicine. He has been awarded four gene therapy-related patents and performed Florida’s first gene therapy on a patient with cystic fibrosis in 1996.

Flotte, 39, joined the UF faculty in 1996. He came here from Johns Hopkins University, where he was an instructor and then assistant professor of pediatrics from 1992 to 1996. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of New Orleans in 1982 with a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences and from the Louisiana State University School of Medicine in 1986.

The UF Genetics Institute is a multidisciplinary program that includes fields such as pediatrics, horticultural sciences, biostatistics, chemistry and botany, and areas of study such as the Powell Gene Therapy Center, the Program in Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology, the Center for Mammalian Genetics and the Program in Medical Ethics, Law and Humanities.

Among the projects currently under way is the construction of a building to house the institute. Flotte said UF has received $1.4 million in construction funding, and the pending federal budget includes another $5 million for a Genetics Institute building. Flotte hopes the building will be completed by 2004.

The institute had roughly $20 million in grant funding committed when it was created. That has since nearly doubled. New commitments include:

A five-year, $5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop gene therapy for genetic and metabolic diseases; another five-year, $5 million grant from the NSF to develop in-depth functional studies of the corn genome; and a five-year, $10 million grant from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation to develop gene therapy for diabetes.

In addition, the institute has a renewed commitment from the Alpha One Foundation and the state of Florida to partner as a national research resource center for the diagnosis and therapy of alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency, a genetic cause of emphysema and liver disease. UF Genetics Institute researchers will lead a statewide genetic screening program for that disease, will create a national tissue and DNA bank, and will plan to start a trial of gene therapy for patients with that disorder within the coming year, Flotte said.

On the faculty side, new developments include the recent hirings of Doug and Pam Soltis, two world-renowned plant geneticists whose studies have rewritten the phylogenetic tree of the plant kingdom. They will have appointments in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Florida Museum of Natural History, respectively, Flotte said.