Science Market Update

Representatives from the University of Arizona, Tucson announced two massive monetary awards this week for researchers in life science disciplines.

Highlighting UA Tucson's Summer achievements though was a $43 million award to support at least five years of disease research, both on the basic science and clinic sides. This record breaking grant from this NIH, the largest in Arizona's history, will likely propel UA's ranking further ahead on the 2016 NIH Life Science Funding statistics list. In 2015, UAZ received a total of $75.5 million. 

“This is huge for Arizona. Only four academic medical centers across the country were chosen,” said Elizabeth Calhoun, one of the grant’s principal investigators at the UA’s Arizona Health Sciences Center. “Arizona will now have the ability to partake in the next generation of science in a way that they have never had an ability to do."

(University of Arizona campus, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

The second was a $11.4 million, five-year project grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute which will fund research into the genetics of acute lung disorders. Dr. Joe "Skip" Garcia, the senior vice president of health sciences at the University of Arizona and principal investigator of this study, received this award through the NIH's highly competitive Project Program Grant which encourages collaborative projects between peers with diverse specialties to catalyze innovative results. 

"Coming shortly after the announcement of the largest NIH grant ever awarded in the state of Arizona, this award is another reminder of the strength of the UA Health Sciences and the impact our faculty researchers, clinicians and teachers are creating in our state and around the world." ~UA President Ann Weaver Hart

 To learn more about life science research developments and  discoveries  at the University of Arizona, see the left links  featuring recently published UA articles previously published on  Science Market Update:

Tuberculosis is a terrible disease that is characterized by a bad, sometimes bloody cough, and which could lead to other serious health problems, or even death.

Over 1.5 million people currently die from TB each year, and as many as one third of the world’s population is currently infected, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In an effort to combat this worldwide health concern, Michael Niederweis, Ph.D., and colleagues from the University of Alabama at Birmingham have made an important discovery. The scientists recently uncovered an important toxin called Tuberculosis Necrotizing Toxin (TNT) that resides within the pathogenic bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis and aids in survival and proliferation.

Life science researchers interested in learning about how barley is able to withstand such unpredictable weather recently conducted research at Washington State University, Pullman that explains how genes in the barley plant are able to defend against risks like aging, drought, heat and disease. Barley is able to live longer because a specific gene in the plant acts as a switch that allows it to defend against aging and tolerate stress and attacks from diseases.

Have you ever lay in bed tossing and turning, wishing you could fall asleep? While most people have trouble falling asleep some nights because of a late evening coffee or a stressful day, those who suffer from chronic insomnia are at a serious health risk if they don’t get an adequate amount of sleep. Approximately 15 percent of older adults in the United States suffer chronic insomnia, which can lead the way to cardiovascular disease, hypertension, weight gain, type 2 diabetes and even an earlier death.

Life science researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles have discovered the answer to two questions whose answers have eluded insomnia and sleep researchers in the past: Can treating insomnia reduce inflammation, and what is the most effective therapy for treating insomnia? The study, published in the journal Sleep¸ shows that treating insomnia led to decreases in a known marker of inflammation called C-reactive protein (CRP). 

The human body is specially designed to defend against infectious microbes, viruses and potential threats that are able to make their way to the intestines after eating even the most harmless types of foods. Dedicated immune cells work within the thin layer of tissue between the gut and the rest of the body to keep watch for potential hazards. 

To learn more, life science researchers at Rockefeller University conducted a study on the development of a special class of immune cells known as intraepithelial lymphocytes (IELs) that live in this zone. Their findings could play an important role in our understanding of inflammatory diseases of the gut, such as Inflammatory Bowel Disorder and celiac disease, as well as cancer.