UNMC College of Medicine faculty received 17 grant awards representing more than $2 million in new funding during the month of May. Highlights included:
Kaushik Patel, Ph.D., cellular & integrative physiology, has received more than $500,000 through a National Institutes of Health R01 award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for a study on sympathetic nerve stimulation of the hypothalamus in animal models of heart failure to understand how reducing this neural drive could reduce heart failure symptoms.
Surinder Batra, Ph.D., biochemistry & molecular biology, has received more than $300,000 through a National Institutes of Health U01 award from the National Cancer Institute to study racial disparities in the diagnosis of prostate cancer in hopes to use MIC-1, EGFR, and CXCR4 in combination as molecular biomarkers for earlier and more accurate diagnoses.
Diana Do, M.D., ophthalmology and visual sciences, is the UNMC lead on a phase III, industry-sponsored study assessing the safety and efficacy of the intravitreal administration of a monoclonal antibody for the treatment of geographic atrophy secondary to age-related macular degeneration . Dr. Do also is the UNMC lead on a phase II, industry-sponsored study that will assess the safety and efficacy of a novel treatment to reduce central retinal thickness in patients with diabetic macular edema.
Geoffrey Thiele, Ph.D., internal medicine – rheumatology, has received support through the Rheumatology Research Foundation to study products of oxidative stress that can lead to immune tolerance loss, the creation of antibodies against these products, and the presence of these products and antibodies in the circulation of patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
Susan Swindells, M.B.B.S., internal medicine – infectious diseases, is the UNMC lead on a phase III, industry-sponsored clinical study that will assess the safety and efficacy of using daily oral doses of a novel non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase in treatment-naïve HIV-1 infected patients.
Industry-sponsored grants:
The following industry-sponsored contracts and foundation grants also were received. Information on clinical trials enrolling patients at UNMC can be found here.
Diana Florescu, M.D., internal medicine – infectious diseases, has received support for a retrospective non-interventional study involving patients diagnosed with adenovirus infections.
Edibaldo Silva-Lopez, M.D., Ph.D., surgery – surgical oncology, is the UNMC lead on a phase IIIb, clinical study of a novel treatment for patients with unresected, stage III to IV melanoma.
Yulong Li, M.D., Ph.D., emergency medicine, has received support from the American Heart Association for his research on how the dysfunctions in ventricular vagal nerve stimulation may lead to ventricular arrhythmias observed in heart failure.
Krishna Gundabolu, M.B.B.S., internal medicine – oncology/hematology, is the UNMC lead on a phase II clinical study, supported by the National Marrow Donor Program, which aims to develop novel approaches for graft-versus-host disease prevention.
Cheng Wang, Ph.D., obstetrics/gynecology, has received support from Colleen’s Dream Foundation, a group that supports ovarian cancer research, for his studies of the molecular causes of ovarian dysfunction.
Shilpa Buch, Ph.D., pharmacology & experimental neuroscience, has received post-doctoral salary support through a fellowship awarded for HIV and drug use research.
Kristina Bailey, M.D., internal medicine – pulmonary, is the UNMC lead for a comparative effectiveness study to reduce readmission rates of patients with COPD.
Sasha Shillcutt, M.D., anesthesiology, has received support from the American Geriatrics Society for her clinical trial involving the use of echocardiography-based hemodynamic anesthesia management of elderly patients with left ventricular diastolic dysfunction.
Julie Vose, M.D., internal medicine – oncology/hematology, is the UNMC lead on a phase IIIb, clinical study that continues the evaluation of patients involved in earlier clinical trials who received a novel treatment for leukemia and lymphoma.
Dmitry Oleynikov, M.D., surgery – general surgery, has received fellowship support from the Foundation for Surgical Fellowships in the area of general minimally invasive surgery.
Jean Grem, M.D., internal medicine – oncology/hematology, has received support for a clinical study of a novel treatment for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer that has not responded to standard chemotherapies.