Latest Blogs
-
Kim and Todd Saxton: Go for the gold! But maybe not every time.
-
Q&A: What you need to know about the CDC’s new mask guidance
-
Carmel distiller turns hand sanitizer pivot into a community fundraising platform
-
Lebanon considering creating $13.7M in trails, green space for business park
-
Local senior-living complex more than doubles assisted-living units in $5M expansion
Blog Roll
Studying early-on Alzheimer’s disease in adults in their 40s and 50s. Recruiting minority patients to study the effects of pain control. Consolidating databases to analyze treatment of HIV/AIDS.
These medical studies and dozen more at the Indiana University School of Medicine helped the school raise $189.3 million last year, up 26% from a year earlier, from the federal National Institutes of Health.
That helped the medical school set a school record for NIH funding for the fourth straight year. The grants ranged in size from $6,000 to $14.47 million, and covered almost every aspect of medicine from neurology and psychiatry to anesthesiology and emergency medicine.
The NIH is the lead federal agency responsible for biomedical and public health research.
The increase propels the IU School of Medicine to 14th out of 92 public medical schools that receive NIH funding (up from 16th place a year ago), and 28th out of 145 medical schools overall (up from 33rd place).
Here are 10 projects that received the largest grants:
- $14.47 million: A two-year observational study designed to look at disease progression in adults with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Lead researcher: Dr. Liana Apostolova.
- $11.16 million: A program to store and provide DNA, plasma and brain tissue and other biological materials to help research in Alzheimer’s disease. Lead researcher: Dr. Tatiana Foroud.
- $6.6 million: Support for the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, founded in 2008 to accelerate research and improve health on the state’s most pressing health challenges. Lead administrator: Dr. Anantha Shekhar
- $6.5 million: Funding to develop the next generation of late-onset Alzheimer’s disease models based on human data. Lead researcher: Dr. Brian Lamb.
- $5.77 million: Drug discovery for Alzheimer’s disease. Lead researcher: Dr. Alan Palkowitz.
- $3.73 million: Collecting and analyzing data about treatment of HIVand evaluating outcomes of people living with HIV/AIDS. Lead researcher: Dr. Kara Kay Wools-Kaloustian.
- $2.87 million: Support for the Indiana Alzheimer’s Disease Center, one of 32 Alzheimer’s disease research centers nationally that are hubs for clinical trials and patient-support programs. Lead researcher: Dr. Andrew Saykin.
- $2.79 million: A project to recruit minority and underserved patients and test effects of genotype-guided opioid therapy on pain control and opioid-related adverse events. Lead researcher: Dr. Todd Skaar.
- $2.76 million: Support basic and translational research being done at the IU Simon Cancer Center. Lead researcher: Dr. Pat Loehrer.
- $2.38 million: Research to understand the role that certain proteins play during heart development in an effort to minimize congenital heart defects, the most common birth defect. Lead researcher: Dr. Anthony Firulli.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.
I always find it interesting that sometimes headlines and stories can provide a false impression of a given situation. It is not that the information is incorrect in a news story. In this case, we, the business/local community, are supposed to believe that our one research medical school is doing great things and getting significant federal funding for its research. The funded areas mentioned in the article do not include serious public health issues of our State such as, diabetes, obesity, smoking, heart disease, cancer. Unfortunately, if one looks beyond the borders of our State, one will see a totally different picture. There are a variety of ways to illustrate this. However, a simple one is looking at the following listing from US NEWS & WORLD REPORT: https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-medical-schools/most-research-money-rankings?_sort=desc. One would think that with all of the publicity of Indiana CTSI, Indiana Biosciences Research Institute, BioCrossroads, one would have expected to see IU much higher on the list. Unfortunately, that is not the case. It does not matter if it is private or state-supported medical school. Also, when one considers the amount of IU’s collaboration with the pharmaceutical and medical device industry, one is equally disappointed. The business community and the citizens of our State deserve much more than we are receiving. One only has to look beyond our borders for a medical school of any notoriety. A minor league team should not pretend it is competing in the big leagues!! There are ways to improve the situation, but it seems that a monopoly at any cost is what we have to accept for our State.