UNMC College of Medicine faculty received 34 grant awards representing more than $3.7 million in new funding during the month of August. Highlights included:
Opiate may cause emergence of HIV-1 variant
Shilpa Buch, Ph.D., pharmacology & experimental neuroscience, has received a National Institutes of Health award for more than $700,000 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to study how the use of opiates, such as heroin, might be leading to the emergence of a new, highly-infectious variant of HIV-1 in Clade C regions.
Impaired lipid storage may lead to fatty liver disease
Carol Casey, Ph.D., internal medicine – GI, has received a National Institutes of Health award for more than $500,000 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. This renewal focuses attention on how impairments in the metabolism of lipid droplets, which store fat deposits, could contribute to alcohol-induced fatty liver disease.
Novel gene delivery systems for juvenile Batten disease
Tammy Kielian, Ph.D., pathology & microbiology, has received has received a National Institutes of Health award for more than $300,000 from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to determine if cell-selective targeted therapies would be effective in the treatment of juvenile Batten disease by using an adeno-associated virus gene delivery system to restore gene expression in neurons or astrocytes.
Intracellular exosomic transfer in leukemia
Kishore Challagundla, Ph.D., biochemistry & molecular biology, has received has received a National Institutes of Health award for more than $100,000 from the National Cancer Institute to study the cell-to-cell communication and signaling between acute myeloid leukemia cells and bone marrow mesenchymal cells following exosome transfer within a tumor microenvironment.
Cognitive effects of marijuana use
Tony Wilson, Ph.D., pharmacology & experimental neuroscience, has received has received a National Institutes of Health R03 award for over $0.1 million from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to support neuropsychological testing, neuroimaging, and dynamic functional imaging with magnetoencephalography of HIV-infected or healthy marijuana users and non-users to gain a better understanding of the effects chronic marijuana use has on cognitive and brain functions.
Understanding DNA repair in UV-induced cancer
Gargi Ghosal, Ph.D., genetics, cell biology & anatomy, has received has received a National Institutes of Health award for more than $100,000 from the National Cancer Institute to study the effects of certain proteins that may regulate how polymerases repair UV-induced DNA lesions.
DTRA grant to study infectious pathogens
Marilynn Larson, Ph.D., pathology & microbiology, has received a task order award through the National Strategic Research Institute from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to study the relationship between BSL-2 and BSL-3 strains of naturally occurring pathogens and identify novel mechanisms for suppression of these organisms.
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.
Nora Sarvetnick, Ph.D., surgery – transplant, has received funding through Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International for a study of how anti-bacterial factors could be used as biomarkers for predicting type-1 diabetes in at-risk populations.
Matthew Lunning, D.O., internal medicine – oncology/hematology, is the UNMC lead in a phase Ib/IIa clinical study through the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center which is assessing the use of a combination therapy in patients with B- and T-cell lymphoma. Dr. Lunning also is the UNMC lead on a separate phase I clinical study of a novel small molecule inhibitor to treat patients with B-cell lymphoma.
John Colombo, M.D., pediatrics – pulmonology, has received support from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to develop a Cystic Fibrosis Care, Teaching and Research Center.
James Gigantelli, M.D., ophthalmology & visual sciences, has received a departmental grant from Research to Prevent Blindness.
James Eudy, Ph.D., genetics, cell biology & anatomy, has received support through the University of Nebraska – Lincoln to assist with their Center for Root and Rhizobiome Innovation, funded through a National Science Foundation EPSCoR grant.
Peter James Murphy, M.D., internal medicine – pulmonary, has received support from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to continue his Cystic Fibrosis Center Adult Care Program.
Cyrus Desouza, M.B.B.S., internal medicine – diabetes, endocrinology and metabolism, has received two separate awards to fund technical salary support for his Veteran’s Affairs Nebraska Educational Biomedical Research Association sponsored clinical trials.
David F. Mercer, M.D., Ph.D., surgery – transplant, is the UNMC lead on a clinical study of a novel treatment for pediatric patients with short bowel syndrome.
Sachin Kedar, M.B.B.S., ophthalmology & visual sciences, is the UNMC lead on a phase 2/3 study of the treatment of acute non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy.
Nicole Shonka, M.D., internal medicine – oncology/hematology, is the UNMC lead on a phase 2/3 study of treatment standards for patients undergoing planned resection for recurrent glioblastoma multiforme or anaplastic astrocytoma.
Lyudmyla Berim, M.D., internal medicine – oncology/hematology, is the UNMC lead on a phase 2/3 study to assess the use of a combination therapy as a first-line treatment of patients with metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma.
James McClay, M.D., emergency medicine, has received funding through the University of Kansas Medical Center to assist with a PCORNet bariatric study.
Kai Fu, M.D., Ph.D., pathology & microbiology, has received support to assess the use of a new analysis system to perform in vitro diagnostic tests.
Caitlin Murphy, Ph.D., pathology & microbiology, has received support to perform a pilot evaluation of a new bone and joint assay panel.
Larisa Poluektova, M.D., Ph.D., pharmacology & experimental neuroscience, has received support through the University of Rochester to assess platelet-mediated neuroinflammatory responses to HIV-1.
Sumin Zhou, Ph.D., radiation oncology, has received support for a study titled "Equivalent Square Formula and Empirical Universal Function Form for In-Water Output Ratio of Regular and Flatten-Filter-Free TrueBeam Photon Energies."
Ann Anderson Berry, M.D., Ph.D., pediatrics – newborn medicine, is the UNMC lead on a phase 3 study that will compare the safety and efficacy of two treatments for hospitalized neonates and infants requiring parenteral nutrition.
Steven Caplan, Ph.D., biochemistry & molecular biology, has received support through the University of Nebraska – Lincoln to assist in a study of the mechanisms of Hyaluronan signaling and turnover in prostate cancer.
Andrew Dudley, Ph.D., genetics, cell biology & anatomy, has received an equipment grant through the Nebraska Bankers Association and the University of Nebraska Foundation.
Kathleen Grant, M.D., internal medicine – pulmonary, has received support from the U.S. Veterans Administration in order to understand veterans’ preferences for smoking cessation treatment in primary care.
Stephen Rennard, M.D., internal medicine – pulmonary, has received support through the University of Iowa to study the role of early pulmonary vascular disease in COPD.
Hani Haider, Ph.D., orthopedic surgery, has received support to evaluate a new unicompartmental knee replacement system.
Sara Bares, M.D., internal medicine – infectious diseases, is the UNMC lead on a study that will evaluate changes in bone mineral density of HIV-1-infected patients after switching antiretroviral therapy regimens.
Zeljka Korade, Ph.D., pediatrics – metabolism, has received support through Vanderbilt University to assist on their study of sterols, neurogenesis, and environmental agents.
Danish Bhatti, M.D., neurological sciences, is the UNMC lead on a clinical study, sponsored by Massachusetts General Hospital, which will evaluate a novel treatment in its ability to slow the clinical decline in early Parkinson’s disease.