When UNMC broke its record for total research grants in a single quarter by bringing in $26 million during July, August and September, it was a tribute to the university’s rise in innovative research projects and its ability to recruit top investigators.
“UNMC is fortunate that so many investigators are engaging in innovative research,” said Thomas Rosenquist, Ph.D., UNMC vice chancellor for research. “It is also important that the university has been able to hire so many of the best and brightest researchers in the country. During this first quarter, we had 40 research projects funded for $100,000 or more.”
David Bylund, Ph.D., UNMC professor of pharmacology, received a three-year, $497,000 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to develop laboratory animal models for testing antidepressants designed for children and adolescents.
“There are no established juvenile rodent animal models of clinical depression,” Dr. Bylund said. “We have reasonable rodent animal models for adults that predict more than 90 percent of how well drugs work in adult humans, but no one to this point has looked at models in the young animal to see what drugs might be effective in children and adolescents. An important difference between clinical depression in children and adolescents, as compared to adults, is the response to anti-depressant drugs.”
One of UNMC’s newest researchers is Christine Eischen, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Eppley Institute. She received a grant for $1.47 million over five years from the National Institutes of Health.
“The focus of my research is to identify and characterize specific genes that regulate lymphoma development,” Dr. Eischen said. “We utilize mouse models that mimic important aspects of human lymphoma and biochemical and molecular approaches to evaluate genes of interest. Determining the function of the identified genes in a living organism is critical to understand the physiological role that specific genes have in normal cell growth and survival and how these genes are then altered in cancer.
“The goal of our research is to increase understanding of how lymphoma develops, which should lead to improved therapeutics for the treatment of lymphoma.”
On the other hand, Irving Zucker, Ph.D, Theodore F. Hubbard Professor of Cardiovascular Research and chairman, department of physiology and biophysics, is one of the university’s most senior researchers. He received nearly $2 million to study chronic heart failure.
“Heart failure is a disorder that is growing in epidemic proportions in the United States,” Dr. Zucker said. “This is due, in part, to an aging population and to medicine’s ability to enhance survival from acute events such as heart attacks and rhythm disturbances. Our project is designed to study the relationships between the nervous system and the circulatory system in animal models of chronic heart failure. Because the nervous system is responsible for changes in heart rate and in the force of the contraction of the heart and blood vessels, over activity of this portion of the nervous system contributes to a worsening of the heart failure state.
“Our studies will elucidate the cellular and molecular mechanisms that contribute to the increased nervous activity. We will investigate these mechanisms in the brain and in the peripheral circulation. Finally, we will determine the role of exercise training on alterations in these mechanisms and on the changes in heart function that exercise training effects in our models of heart failure. These studies will lead to an enhanced understanding of the mechanisms responsible for the continual deterioration of the cardiovascular system in chronic heart failure patients.”
Keith Mueller, Ph.D., professor, department of preventive and societal medicine, received $1.2 million to establish a center for rural health policy.
“The RUPRI (Rural Policy Research Institute) Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis conducts several small scale studies designed to help shape public policy,” Dr. Mueller said.
Projects funded for the current year include: examining reasons for increases in health care costs in rural areas; developing a methodology for selecting rural communities to participate in a special project to monitor changes in health care delivery and other services in those communities; simulating the effects of changes in Medicare payment on physician practice revenues; and assessing the development of Medicare preferred provider organizations in rural areas.
The center performed an analysis of the differences in Medicare payments to physicians in rural areas compared to physicians in urban areas, and the data was helpful in determining an acceptable payment for physicians and included in the Medicare prescription drug legislation. The center also performed an analysis of health insurance plans participating in the Federal Employment Health Benefits Plan.