West Virginia CTSI awards $360,000 in pilot grants
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The West Virginia Clinical and Translational Science Institute (WVCTSI) is awarding $360,000 in grants to eight WVCTSI faculty members for clinical and translational research projects. The Pilot Grants Program received 43 applications late last year and will fund the top eight proposals. These proposals focus on utilizing new discoveries to improve the lives of people in West Virginia and Appalachia. The maximum award for each project is $50,000.
“We hope these awards are only the beginning. In this first year of funding, with these eight, we will have funded a total of 14 grants,” Uma Sundaram, M.D., founding director of the WVCTSI, said. “The WVCTSI aims to address the many health disparities in our state. One way to help accomplish this is by supporting our innovative researchers. We hope these grants will position promising researchers to compete for external funding so that they may continue to help our communities.”
The WVCTSI was created in 2008 to address health disparities most commonly affecting Appalachians. The Clinical and Translational Pilot Grants Program provides a mechanism for soliciting and awarding clinical, translational and community engagement projects, from concept to competitiveness for external funding.
The research projects will cover a range of topics including stroke, cancer, arthritis and Alzheimer’s disease.
The Pilot Grants Competition Awardees include:
For more information about WVCTSI, see: www.wvctsi.org.
“We hope these awards are only the beginning. In this first year of funding, with these eight, we will have funded a total of 14 grants,” Uma Sundaram, M.D., founding director of the WVCTSI, said. “The WVCTSI aims to address the many health disparities in our state. One way to help accomplish this is by supporting our innovative researchers. We hope these grants will position promising researchers to compete for external funding so that they may continue to help our communities.”
The WVCTSI was created in 2008 to address health disparities most commonly affecting Appalachians. The Clinical and Translational Pilot Grants Program provides a mechanism for soliciting and awarding clinical, translational and community engagement projects, from concept to competitiveness for external funding.
The research projects will cover a range of topics including stroke, cancer, arthritis and Alzheimer’s disease.
The Pilot Grants Competition Awardees include:
- Stephen Alway, Ph.D., Department of Exercise Physiology, “Phase I (T1) translation of basic to clinical research: Offsetting Sarcopenia with Exercise and Resveratrol”
- Erik Bey, Ph.D., Department of Basic Pharmaceutical Sciences, “Modulation of oxidative stress regulators alters the invasive of non-small cell lung cancers”
- Gregory Konat, Ph.D., Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, “Genetic Basis of Seizure Hypersusceptibility Induced by Peripherally Restricted Inflammation”
- Sudjit Luanpitpong, Ph.D., Department of Basic Pharmaceutical Sciences, “Lung carcinogenesis of mountaintop mining particulate matter”
- Paola Pergami, M.D., Ph.D., Department of Pediatrics, “Can we predict Motor and Cognitive Outcome After Ischemic Brain Lesions by Combination of Resting State fMRI and Measures of White Matter Integrity?”
- Elena Pugacheva, Ph.D., Department of Biochemistry, “Phase I pre-clinical studies to determine the efficacy of Aurora A (AURKA) kinase inhibitors MLN8025 and PHA680632 in prevention and treatment of breast cancer metastasis in transplanted stage III and IV breast cancer patients”
- Miranda Reed, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, “Increased Clearance of Glutamate as a Treatment for Alzheimer’s Disease”
- David Siderovski, Ph.D., Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, and Colleen Watkins, M.D., Department of Orthopaedics, “Establishing GPSM3 as a novel biomarker and/or drug discovery target for inflammatory arthritides”
For more information about WVCTSI, see: www.wvctsi.org.