Washington University in St Louis (WUSTL) has just received a $2M research grant that will go towards combating a disorder which afflicts, often fatally, nearly 5.8 million Americans each year: heart failure. Heart failure is one of the leading causes of death in the US and although many promising drugs have been introduced over the years, we have yet to find a definitive treatment for the variety of cases that doctors encounter. This $2M NIH award wil go to a team of WUSTL scientists for basic research that will contribute to our understanding of heart disease and ideally lead to more effective treatment. The end goal of this research project is the design and construction of artificial tissue models of the heart, which will allow scientists to more quickly and efficiently test new drugs.
Tags: Bioscience research, Midwest, biomedical sciences, biomedical research, Bioresearch, Washington University, Missouri, WUSTL, heart disease, 2012, Biochemistry, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Research, NIH, MO, St Louis, BRPF, basic research funding
Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) recently received $245,115 in new NIH science research funding for a study of the effectiveness of two drugs commonly used to restore heart function in cardiac arrest victims. Researchers will be determining whether the drugs Amiodarone and Lidocaine actually improve cardiac arrest patients' chance of survival, and if so which is more effective. These drugs are both used to restore the loss of rhythmic and regular heartbeats that is a common cause of cardiac arrest, though their overall effectiveness at improving survival among patients has not been well documented. Typically first responders pick one or the other, but their decisions are not based on hard comparative evidence of the drugs' benefits.
Tags: Northeast, Oregon Health Sciences University, Oregon, 2012, Cardiac Arrest, Front Line event, NIH, OR, OHSU, Portland, BRPF
While magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners are most often associated with clinical diagnostics activities, their ability to visualize internal structures of the body in detail, especially soft tissues, makes MRI scanning machines extremely valuable for laboratory research scientists as well. So it's no small matter that an NIH equipment grant has made it possible for Cornell University in Ithaca to get one of its own, just last week, and establish the Cornell MRI Facility in Martha Van Rensselaer Hall. It's not just any scanner either, but a 3 Tesla GE Discovery 750, which provides noninvasive imaging with high signal-to-noise ratio and spatial resolution for structural and functional research involving small animals, humans, plants and biomedical materials. MRI technology does not involve radiation.
Tags: Northeast, Cornell University, New research facilities, New York, NIH, Research equipment, Laboratory Imaging Equipment
A new NIH funded research project at Ohio State University has linked a certain protein in the heart to cardiac damage after chemotherapy. The study was lead by Govindasamy Ilangovan, Ohio State associate professor of internal medicine (photo courtesy of OSU), and received a total of $419,375 in funding from the NIH.
Tags: Ohio State University, Protein Research, Funding, NIH
The University of Wisconsin at Madison is doing very well launching bioscience startups and attracting young entrepreneurs to set up shop near the sprawling campus on Lake Mendota. The University Research Park is so popular there's a huge Phase II addition several years in the planning and due to break ground any day. Funding for university spinoffs, like the NIH's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants, are helping to fuel Madison's bioscience economy too, as a team from the Dept. of Chemical and Biological Engineering just proved in securing $362,489 towards developing its novel advanced biomaterials for wound healing and surgical applications.
Tags: Midwest, Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin, University Research, university research park, University of Wisconsin Madison, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Funding, NIH, chemistry researchers, Biomedical Research Funding
The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) is a branch of the NIH, and they administer the ENCODE project, which stands for Encyclopedia of DNA Elements. Established in 2003, the goal of ENCODE is to create a comprehensive catalog of functional genomic elements. Towards that end, they have just awarded a further $10.5M in grants to 10 research institutions with investigators working in three main areas:
Tags: genomic research, genome research, biology research, Funding, Genomics, NIH, research lab awards
The 1000 Genomes Project is an international genomic research and data collection effort that has produced "a deep catalog of human genetic variation" for public research use. Now, thanks to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the White House's recently-announced Big Data Research and Development Initiative, the 1000 Genomes data is available gratis on the AWS cloud. In reality, there are over 1700 genome profiles in the demographically-diverse study, and all that data takes up about 200 terabytes of memory, according to a New York Times article on the cloud bonanza. So even though researchers could download the data free to their own computers from 1000 Genomes directly before, it's something you really don't want to do, even if you have that kind of memory (re: 200TB). Instead, you'll likely be better off accessing the data through AMS and paying them to crunch numbers for you, which probably explains why AWS has decided to engage in this bit of philanthropy. Future profit, plus their preeminence as a computational resource in the brave new world of Big Data.
Tags: CA, 2013, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, genomic research, Southwest, 2012, Berkeley, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Funding, Genomics, NIH, biotech solutions, NSF, National Lab, UC Berkeley, UCBerk
Recently, Georgetown University researchers received a $3 million NIH bioresearch grant to open a new collaborative HIV/AIDS research center called the Developmental Center for AIDS Research (D-CFAR).
Tags: Georgetown University, Washington DC, Northeast, AIDS Research, BioResearch Product Faire Event, Funding, NIH, Georgetown
Federal basic and applied science research funding could see an increase of 3.3% over 2012 (enacted) levels, to $64B, if the President's budget request for 2013 is approved. Holding tight to the promise of supporting technology and innovation while at the same time respecting the deficit cap imposed by Congress, the latest budget request proposes only level $30.7B funding for the NIH but funding increases for the NSF, NIST, and DOE Office of Science, with a combined total of $13.1B. 
Tags: 2012 Research Funding, 2011 Research Funding, venture development in life sciences, Funding, NIH, new research grants, NSF, charitable giving
Although NIH has been issuing salary caps to recipients of federal research grants for over 20 years, this is the first year that the levels of the caps have been reduced. It is now restricted to Executive Level II of the Federal Pay Scale. Implementation of the lower level is effective with FY2012 awards where the initial Issue Date of the award is on/after 12/23/2011. For FY2012 awards issued on/before December 22, 2011, the salary limitation remains at Executive Level 1, $199,700.
Tags: 2012 Research Funding, Funding, NIH