Faculty Receive Inaugural Research Grants

Posted on: June 25, 2012

Thirteen faculty members received $260,000 in grants in the College of Medicine’s first competitive research grant program. The $20,000 individual grants will fund pilot studies in basic and clinical sciences and medical education and are designed to help investigators pursue innovative research ideas that may lead to external funding.

Dr. Deborah German, vice president for medical affairs and dean of the College of Medicine praised the 28 grant proposals on topics including obesity and Alzheimer’s disease, improved methods for detecting Lyme disease and developing student evaluation tools for on-line teaching modules in psychiatry.

“The proposals show the expertise and range of our faculty research,” Dr. German said. “Our goal is to make these grants an annual tradition as we support the college’s research mission.”

The Executive Faculty team selected the winning proposals based on the project’s innovation, scientific merit and interdisciplinary collaboration.

These faculty members received inaugural competitive research grants:

Deborah Altomare, “Strategies to Improve Immune Reconstitution & Anti-Cancer responsiveness of Immunotherapy.”

• Lori Boardman, “Oral & Lower Anogenital Trace Neoplasia: Prevalence & Risk Factors for HPV Infection in a Cohort of University-Aged Women.”
• Ella Bossy-Wetzel, “Alzheimer’s Disease and Obesity.”
• Limei Chen, “Finding the Possible – NSAID’s new function in lung cancer.”
• Steven Ebert, “Adrenergic cells and congenital heart defects: A systems-based approach.”
• Alvaro Estevez, “Tyrosine nitration in cancer.”
• Mollie Jewett, “Immuno-PCR detection of Lyme disease – an improved diagnostic method.”
• Annette Khaled, “Development of Murine Xenograft Models for the Testing of Anti-Cancer Therapeutics.”
• Martin Klapheke, “Developing Evaluation Tools for a Free National Databank of Online Psychiatry Teaching Modules.”
• Michael Lee, “Validation of a Novel Cytotoxic Peptide in Breast Cancer Mouse Models.”
• Mark Muller, “Single Cell Analysis of DNA Repair.”
• Kyle Rohde, “Deoxyribozyme sensor-based diagnostics for Mycobacterium tuberculosis.”
• Antonis Zervos, “The role of the mitochondrial Omi/HtrA2 protease in protein quality control.”