The $11.3 million grant received by researchers at the University of Nevada School of Medicine last week not only is the largest award in the school's history, it's also expected to provide a major boost to five research careers.
The medical school received the grant from the National Institutes of Health to study smooth muscle plasticity.
Smooth muscle refers to the musculature of the body's hollow organs such as blood vessels, the bladder and other parts of the gastrointestinal tract.
Some smooth muscles have intrinsic electrical activity, and this causes contractions that allow food, blood and other substances to pass through them.
"Plasticity refers to the basic changes in cells during disease states," said Kent Sanders, the director of the program and chairman of UNR's department of physiology and cell biology chairman.
"For instance, what happens to smooth muscles in atherosclerosis, diabetes, and asthma.
Many different kinds of pathological conditions cause smooth muscles to change, and these changes reduce the function of the muscles and are not good for the individual."
The five-year grant will provide funding to establish a multidisciplinary Center of Biomedical Excellence, or COBRE.
"There are five projects," Sanders said.
"The COBRE also supports core laboratories that will provide services for all the people involved and will also purchase new technology."
The primary focus of the grant is to provide facilities and training for several junior faculty who have not yet emerged as independent investigators and help them get their own labs and independent research projects going.
"It's really going to boost the careers of five people; it's an incredible opportunity," said Christine Cremo, biochemistry associate professor who serves as codirector of the program.
"The idea is to focus on these young people to try to build our biomedical investigator pool.
That's really what the NIH is trying to do."
In addition to Sanders and Cremo, the COBRE's four current project leaders are Dean Burkin, Brian Perrino, Sang Don Koh and Nick Spencer all assistant or associate professors in the Department of Physiology and Cell Biology.
An additional assistant professor will be recruited for the biochemistry department as part of the program.
At 31 years old, Spencer, from Melbourne, Australia, is the youngest of the four project leaders.
He said the COBRE is "an absolute kick-start" to an independent research career.
"What it means is that junior people like me are given their own laboratory and independent funding," he said.
"It will mean that I will have publications as a senior author, which is perhaps the most important thing in terms of getting funding in the future."
The School of Medicine's Department of Physiology and Cell Biology is internationally renowned for its research on the gastrointestinal tract and smooth muscles and has garnered more than $20 million in NIH grants since 1989.
The COBRE award will complement and expand this research.
"The NIH wants the COBRE to be the nucleus of something bigger in the future - the Nevada Smooth Muscle Research Center," Cremo said.
"When you have a group of scientists who work in a closely related area, you really have something bigger than the parts.
This is the way you position yourself at the international level in the research arena as being a top level institution."
This is the second COBRE award received by the University of Nevada School of Medicine.
In 2000, a research team led by Joseph Hume and Burton Horowitz received $9.24 million to study heart disease.
