NIGMS Invests in Scientific Grand Opportunities with Recovery Act Funds
The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), part of the National
Institutes of Health (NIH), is investing $42.3 million for grants in scientific
areas it identified as "Grand Opportunities (GO)." NIH developed the GO grant
program to stimulate biomedical research and the economy using funds provided
by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act).
"The GO grants fund projects that promise to have a significant impact on a field
of biomedical science over two years," said NIGMS Director Jeremy M. Berg, Ph.D. "By
closing specific knowledge gaps, creating new technologies, or building community-wide
resources, these awards will dramatically propel progress in key scientific fields
with a one-time investment."
The Recovery Act grants will also contribute to the economic recovery by creating
jobs for researchers, technical and support staff, the makers of scientific equipment
and others across the country. States receiving GO grants are: Arkansas, California,
Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania,
Texas, Tennessee, Washington and Wisconsin.
The GO grants include a broad range of projects. Several establish new databases,
service centers or other resources that will be accessible to the entire scientific
community, advancing biomedical research — and possibly medical care — for years
to come. Others tackle large projects, such as understanding the activity of
all the genes in human white blood cells, which require the collaborative work
of dozens of scientists.
NIGMS has awarded 14 GO grants to scientists in 13 states:
VESPA: Vanderbilt Electronic Systems for Pharmacogenomic Assessment, $1.4 million.
Daniel Masys and Dan Roden, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville.
This project will receive funding from both NIGMS and the NIH Office of the Director.
It will contribute to the goal of personalized medicine by creating a computer-based
system to help doctors tailor their prescriptions to the genetic profile of each
patient. The project aims to improve the effectiveness and safety of drug therapies.
Gene Expression and Regulatory Networks in Human Leukocytes, $7.3 million.
Christophe Benoist and Diane Mathis, Harvard Medical School, Boston
Advancing Drug Development from Medicinal Plants using Transcriptomics and Metabolomics,
$6 million.
Joseph Chappell, University of Kentucky, Lexington
Dean Dellapenna, Michigan State University, East Lansing
Sarah O'Connor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
The Cell: An Image Library, $2.5 million.
Caroline Kane, American Society for Cell Biology, Bethesda, Md.
Fine-scale Recombination Rate Variation Within and Between Drosophila Species,
$1.8 million.
Josep Comeron, University of Iowa, Iowa City
Corbin Jones, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Mohamed Noor, Duke University, Durham, N.C.
ImageJ as an Extensible Image Processing Framework, $1.8 million.
Kevin Eliceiri, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Subcellular Localization of Nanoparticles, $3 million.
Mauro Ferrari, Paolo Decuzzi and David Gorenstein, University of Texas Health
Science Center, Houston
Jim Klostergaard, Gabriel Lopez-Berestein, Chun Li and Anil Sood, University
of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston
Rebekah Drezek, Jennifer West, Lon Wilson and Junghae Suh, Rice University, Houston,
Texas
Wah Chiu, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas
Metabolomics Network for Drug Response Phenotype, $4.5 million.
Rima Kaddurah-Daouk, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C.
The Arabidopsis Transcription Factor ORFeome + Downstream Genomic Application,
$2 million.
Steve Kay, University of California, San Diego
Joseph Ecker, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, Calif.
Transcription Characterization of Medicinal Plants Relevant to Human Health,
$2.8 million.
Norman Lewis and Rodney Croteau, Washington State University, Pullman
A Multidisciplinary Approach to Elucidating Gene Function in a Model Gram-Positive
Bacterium, $2 million.
David Rudner, Harvard Medical School, Boston
SciBay: A New Methodology for Scientific Collaboration and Gene Function Determination,
$4 million.
Martin Steffen and Simon Kasif, Boston University School of Medicine
Richard Roberts, New England BioLabs, Inc., Ipswich, Mass.
Stable Isotope Analytical Core for Studies in Human Metabolism, $0.5 million.
Robert Wolfe, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock.
This project will receive funding from both NIGMS and the NIH Office of the Director.
Innovative Supercomputing for Breakthrough Molecular Dynamics, $2.7 million.
Joel Stiles, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh
For project details, go to http://projectreporter.nih.gov/reporter.cfm, check
the box that says "Show only projects supported by NIH Recovery Act funds" and
enter the name of the scientist in the Principal Investigator field.
NIGMS is a part of NIH that supports basic research to increase our understanding
of life processes and lay the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment
and prevention. For more information on the Institute's research and training
programs, see http://www.nigms.nih.gov.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — The Nation's
Medical Research Agency — includes 27 Institutes and
Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting
and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research,
and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both
common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and
its programs, visit www.nih.gov. The activities described in this release are being funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
More information about the NIH Recovery Act grant funding opportunities can be
found at http://grants.nih.gov/recovery/. To track the progress of HHS activities
funded through the Recovery Act, visit www.hhs.gov/recovery. To track all federal
funds provided through the Recovery Act, visit www.recovery.gov. |