NIH research funding jumps 18 percent

he University Medical Center has posted a record 18 percent increase in research funding from the National Institutes of Health. The Medical Center received research grants totaling $89.9 million for the fiscal year that ended September 30, 2000, up from $76.1 million the previous year.

The 18 percent funding increase more than triples the 5.4 percent increase achieved last year and represents the largest funding boost at the Medical Center in two decades.

"We're absolutely delighted by this news," said Medical Center CEO Jay H. Stein. "This funding increase is the strongest indication yet that the efforts we've undertaken to strengthen the research program are working."

A key objective of the Medical Center's strategy is to bolster its research program in its entirety--that is, to foster growth in selected areas while boosting the quality of research being conducted throughout the institution. This year's NIH funding results indicate that that goal is being realized. Of the $13.8 million in new research funding this year, about half was awarded to "new recruits"--researchers in the new Aab Institute for Biomedical Sciences--and about half was awarded to faculty throughout the Medical Center.

"We're encouraging our faculty from across the Medical Center to collaborate with their newly recruited colleagues," said Deborah A. Cory-Slechta, dean for research and director of the Aab Institute. "These synergistic collaborations offer the ability to maximize our research potential to a new level across the institution."

For example, researchers in the Center for Vaccine Biology and Immunology recently teamed up with colleagues in the Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and the Department of Dermatology to devise a collaborative research program aimed at understanding the body's immune response to human papillomavirus, believed to cause nearly all cases of cervical cancer.

Understanding the immunology of the disease, the researchers predict, will be a stepping stone to creating an effective vaccine or treatment for it. The team applied to the National Institutes of Health for a grant to fund the project, and were awarded $2.2 million--one of the largest research grants awarded to the Medical Center this year.

"This collaborative approach was one of the key reasons we got the grant," said Tim Mosmann, director of the Center for Vaccine Biology and Immunology and the principal investigator for the project. "If the researchers in my center alone had applied for a grant like this, we wouldn't have been successful. If the people in infectious diseases or microbiology and immunology had applied on their own, they probably wouldn't have been successful either. But by combining our strengths we were able to put together a program that the NIH reviewers found convincing."

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