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News from NCRR
People, Awards, Grants and New Developments
New Institutional Development Awards for Health-Related Research
NCRR is providing funds — up to an estimated $64 million — to establish six new Institutional Development Awards (IDeA) over the next five years. These awards support multidisciplinary centers — each concentrating on one general area of research — that strengthen institutional biomedical research capability and enhance research infrastructure. Designed to improve the competitiveness of investigators in states that historically have not received significant levels of competitive NIH research funding, the IDeA program supports the following new centers:
- University of Hawaii at Manoa — to study reproductive biology;
- University of Kentucky — to identify mechanisms linking the epidemic of obesity to cardiovascular disease;
- University of Louisville Research Foundation, Inc. — to study the cardiovascular causes and consequences of diabetes and obesity;
- University of Nebraska Medical Center — to research nanomedicine, drug delivery, therapeutics and diagnostics;
- The Mind Research Network, a nonprofit research organization in Albuquerque, N.M. — to study the neural mechanisms of schizophrenia; and
- Montana State University — to study cellular mechanisms to better understand how to overcome disease.
"By bridging the research funding gap in IDeA states, we are building innovative research teams, leveraging the power of shared resources, and enhancing the science and technology knowledge of the states' workforce," said NCRR Director Barbara M. Alving, M.D. "It is through this focused and innovative approach that we are producing a pipeline of researchers who will become future leaders working to improve the health of diverse populations throughout the nation."
NCRR Funds Two New Biomedical Technology Research Centers
NCRR is providing up to an estimated $11 million over the next five years to establish two new Biomedical Technology Research Centers (BTRCs) designed to provide researchers nationwide with access to specialized research tools training, and state-of-the-art equipment. One center at the Northern California Institute for Research and Education, Inc., in San Francisco will develop innovative imaging techniques designed specifically to better diagnose and treat diseases, such as Alzheimer's. A second center at the University of California, San Diego, will create cutting-edge software for identifying and analyzing sets of interacting proteins that are important in a wide range of diseases, such as cancer.
Each center creates critical and often unique technology to apply to a broad range of basic, clinical and translational research. Serving as test beds for solving complex biomedical research problems, BTRC research projects combine the expertise of multidisciplinary technical and biomedical experts both within the center and through collaborative partnerships. These efforts result in innovative solutions to today's health challenges, which are then actively disseminated to promote rapid adoption and achieve the broadest possible impact.
The advanced techniques developed at the new Northern California Institute for Research and Education BTRC will offer researchers and clinicians who work with neurodegenerative disorders improved image clarity, more reliable and precise methods for capturing anatomical data, more efficient and accurate reconstruction methods, and improved image processing capabilities.
The new center at the University of California, San Diego, will bring creative mathematical approaches to mass spectrometry and will build a new generation of reliable open-access software tools that will catalyze exchange and collaboration among experimental and computational researchers in proteomics, furthering advances in this critical field of research. The center will also focus on training the scientific community in the use of the technologies it develops.
New Mobile Science Lab
The University of Pittsburgh's Clinical and Translational Science Institute unveiled a new mobile science lab that includes 26 work stations and sits inside a 70-foot tractor trailer. The result of collaboration between two NCRR-funded programs — a Clinical and Translational Science Award and a Science Education Partnership Award — the new lab will provide pre-college students in western Pennsylvania with hands-on opportunities to learn about the latest science research while using state-of-the-art lab technology. Photo Courtesy of University of Pittsburgh.
To learn more about the two new BTRC awardees, visit www.ncrr.nih.gov/btrc/2008. For more information about the BTRC program, visit www.ncrr.nih.gov/btrc.
