Science Market Update

UCLA Receives Multi-million Grants and Gifts from Donors

Written by Gloria Beverage | Fri, Aug 24, 2018

Two UCLA research programs have earned state and federal grants totaling $18.8 million, while two departments have been given $3.35 million in private endowments, according to university news reports. The Urology Department received $9.3 million from the state of California while the Fielding School of Public Health earned a $9.5 million grant from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA).

 

 (Image  courtesy of UCLA Health newsroom)

Funding from the state of California will support three years of continued participation by the Urology Department in the 17-year-old IMPACT (Improving Access, Counseling and Treatment for Californians) program, which provides free, high-quality prostate cancer treatments to underinsured or uninsured California men.

“With this program, the state of California made a statement that nobody should be left behind,” Dr. Mark Litwin, professor of urology in the David Geffen School of Medicine and founding director of the program, stated in a UCLA news release.

To date, more than 2,200 California men have received prostate cancer treatment services through the IMPACT Program. In addition to cancer treatments, participants are paired with a nurse case manager to oversee their continued health care.

Fielding School of Public Health researchers were given a five-year, $9.5 million grant to continue a study, originally funded in 2013 by NIDA, to determine if drug abuse creates a greater risk of developing HIV and other diseases.  

Under the direction of Pamina Gorbach, UCLA professor of epidemiology, researchers will continue collecting demographic, behavioral and clinical data from more than 500 Latino and African-American gay men, enrolled between 2013 and 2017, who are either HIV-positive or HIV-negative.  

In addition to Gorbach, the research team includes Co-Principal Investigator Steven Shoptaw, Co-Investigator/Biorepository Director Dr. Grace Aldrovandi and Co-Investigators Ronald Brookmeyer, Marjan Javanbakht, Dr. Jennifer Fulcher, Nina Harawa and Study Director Amy Ragsdale.

Gifts from long-time supporters:

Two long-time supporters of UCLA – The Shapiro Family and Joan and Jerome Snyder -- have participated in the $4.2 billion UCLA Centennial Campaign, which will conclude in December 2019, the university’s 100th anniversary year.

A $2.257 million gift from Ralph, Shirley, Peter and Alison Shapiro has been presented to the David Geffen School of Medicine to support four endowed chairs in the department of pediatrics, according to a university news report.

The five-year endowment will fund a previously established chair in Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics and Cerebral Palsy, currently held by assistant clinical professor Dr. Irene Koolwijk, as well as three additional term chairs.

The chairs will help recruit and train faculty who will specialize in training health care providers to improve the care of children with cerebral palsy, autism and other developmental and behavioral challenges.

An endowed faculty chair in the department of ophthalmology will be established with a $1 million gift from Joan and Jerome Snyder, a university news report stated. The funds will advance teaching and research in vision science.

The Snyders previously endowed two other faculty chairs: one for the director of the ophthalmology residency training program and a second chair focused on cornea diseases.

With all this funding, scientists at the university have the means to purchase many new laboratory products that will benefit their research. Biotechnology Calendar, Inc. produces the Biotechnology Vendor ShowcaseTM event at UCLA twice a year. This event provides a premiere opportunity to market lab supplies to active life science researchers at the university. This semiannual event brings hundreds of active researchers together with scientific supply companies, so that the researchers can find the best and newest products and technologies available that will further their work. 

The 43nd Semiannual Biotechnology Vendor ShowcaseTM event in Los Angeles will be held on April 4th, 2019. Last year, the two events at UCLA together brought 1,023 attendees from 46 different research buildings and 80 on-campus departments. Of these attendees, 223 were purchasing agents, professors and post docs, and 144 were lab managers. 

To learn more about participating in this popular event, visit the link below: 

Researchers in Los Angeles are invited to attend this event for free. To learn more and pre-register, please visit the following link: