UNMC College of Medicine faculty received 14 grant awards representing more than $5.3 million in new funding during the month of November. Here’s one of the highlights:
Great Plains IDeA-CTR is UNMC’s largest research grant
Matthew Rizzo, M.D., neurological sciences, has received a National Institutes of Health award for $3.9 million from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences’ Institutional Development Award (IDeA) program. This will fund the first year of a 5-year, $20 million grant that will create the Great Plains IDeA-CTR Network, a collaboration involving nine institutions in four states — Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Kansas. This grant will focus on developing early career researchers into independent scientists and increasing the infrastructure and other resources needed to support clinical/translational research (CTR) around the region.
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.
Matthew Lunning, D.O., internal medicine – oncology/hematology, is the UNMC lead on a single-center, phase IIa study evaluating the safety and tolerability of a novel drug in treating patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.
Rakesh Singh, Ph.D., pathology & microbiology, has received support to develop a novel nanotherapy to improve the treatment of breast cancer.
Shelby Kutty, M.D., Ph.D., pediatrics – cardiology, has received support to create targeted and non-targeted microbubbles for pediatric applications.
Mark Rupp, M.D., internal medicine – infectious diseases, is the UNMC lead on an observation study of the wear time of an investigational antimicrobial dressing.
Sukhwinder Kaur, Ph.D., biochemistry & molecular biology, has received support to develop ultrasensitive nano-sensors for pancreatic cancer diagnosis and prognosis.
Amy Cannella, M.D., internal medicine – rheumatology, has received the 2017 Amgen Fellowship Training Award from the Rheumatology Research Foundation.
Dmitry Oleynikov, M.D., surgery – general surgery, has received an Investigative Robotic Surgery grant from the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) for a study titled "Ergonomics of Robotic Surgery: Survey and Analysis of Muscle Effort and Fatigue."
Zeljka Korade, M.D., pediatrics – metabolism, has received support through a subcontract with Vanderbilt University to study the effects of neuronal oxidative stress in Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome.
Alexey Kamenskiy, Ph.D., surgery – general surgery, has received support to evaluate novel peripheral stent devices for overall performance, ease of use, and deployment accuracy in diseased arteries.
Jason Foster, M.D., biochemistry & molecular biology, has received support through a subcontract with the University of Nebraska – Lincoln to take part in a study, funded through a seed grant from the Food for Health Collaboration Initiative, titled "Improving the Extraction of Health-Promoting Bioactive Nutrients from Agricultural Commodities of Economic Importance to Nebraska."
Kari Simonsen, M.D., pediatrics – infectious diseases, is the UNMC lead on a phase III clinical study of a novel human monoclonal antibody for the prevention of medically attended respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection.
Deepak Madhavan, M.D., neurological sciences, is the UNMC lead on a clinical study to investigate the efficacy and safety of cannabidiol in the treatment of children and young adults with Dravet syndrome.
Sara Bares, M.D., internal medicine – infectious diseases, has received support from Brigham & Women’s Hospital to study cardiovascular disease risk in HIV-infected women.