Success Stories

Two COBRES from New Hampshire, Center of Integrated Biomedical and Bioengineering Research (University of New Hampshire) and Center for Quantitative Biology (Dartmouth), have received a second year of funding from NIGMS to coordinate SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance in New Hampshire and Vermont, including wastewater surveillance.

NIH has awarded $11.5M in Phase II funding to the Arkansas Children’s Research Institute based on the successes of the COBRE Center for Translational Pediatric Research, established five years ago. The center applies a cutting-edge systems biology approach to understand how diseases like cancer form in children’s developing bodies.

Under the leadership of Alan Tackett, associate director for basic research at ACRI and director of the CTPR, the center is at the forefront of this type of research.

Researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham Division of Cardiovascular Disease have been awarded a $3.7M grant from the NIH National Heart Lung and Blood Institute to study how genetically determined differences in natriuretic peptide levels (heart hormones) regulate the handling of glucose metabolism and use of energy while resting and while exercising.

The grant is being used to fund a first-of-its-kind clinical trial that will recruit healthy individuals through a “genome-first” approach and perform deep metabolic phenotyping to understand the underlying mechanisms responsible for the regulation of the body’s metabolism through NPs.

Clemson University scientists have received $649,898 from the USDA NIFA to study how microorganisms from ruderal grasses – native plants regarded as weeds – can help corn thrive in dry soil, a protective measure against the increase in droughts brought by climate change.

Drought can cause issues for grain crops and three Clemson University scientists are working to get to the root of the problem.

The scientists believe crops have a lesson or two to learn from their weedy relatives when it comes to growing in drier soils. The trick is to harbor beneficial microorganisms on and around the roots to enhance the ability of plants to withstand harsher environments.

The University of Nebraska–Lincoln is leading a 22-institution research collaboration aimed at smoothing this transition by building strong partnerships between two- and four-year colleges. With a five-year, $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the team will conduct research aimed at filling a critical gap in the national understanding of what it takes to help transfer students succeed. Nebraska, whose share of the award is nearly $1.5 million, will headquarter the new research hub.

It is one of the first four research hubs funded through a new NSF program that builds on the agency’s long-standing Scholarships in STEM program, or S-STEM, which funds scholarships and institutional support systems for low-income STEM students. Through the research hubs, NSF aims to identify what’s working — and what’s not — at S-STEM sites using mixed-methods research. Each hub has a different focus, with the overall goal of pinpointing the conditions that facilitate success for the STEM students.

The University of Kentucky’s Center for Cancer and Metabolism (CCM) will continue its critical mission to research the metabolism of cancer with a renewed Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) grant award from the National Institutes of General Medical Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health. The prestigious grant — totaling $11.4 million — will continue to fund UK’s CCM over the next five years.

The Department of Defense awarded $297,831 to Kartik Balachandran, associate professor of biomedical engineering at the U of A, to study the effects of particulate matter pollution on the nasal airway and lung interface.

Balachandran will create the first in vitro benchtop system to incorporate both the upper and lower respiratory systems into a single model.

Over the two-year term of the grant, Balachandran will create and validate a novel airway-lung-on-a-chip, or AirLOC, system engineered from human cells. This will incorporate a multilayered, cell culture platform that mimics both normal and asthmatic nasal and lung epithelia – the tissue that covers all organs and body surfaces.

The NIH has awarded $2.6M to two University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers who co-founded the spinoff Endomimetics to design a better stent.

Ho-Wook Jun, PhD, is principal investigator in the grant, and Brigitta Brott, MD, is the co-investigator. They are co-founders of Endomimetics and have worked together for a decade to develop their bionanomatrix material for coating stents to improve heart disease treatment. Their material has other potential applications in patients with brain aneurysms, kidney dialysis patients and patients with percutaneous osteointegrated prostheses.

Ho-Wook Jun and Brigitta Brott are using techniques licensed by Endomimetics to develop a new stent coating material that may also help patients with brain aneurysms, kidney failure needing kidney dialysis and percutaneous osteointegrated prostheses, in addition to heart disease.

The University of Vermont – in collaboration with 28 universities and institutions – is poised to advance its status as a prominent institution in hydrological research.

This new initiative was made possible through the tireless efforts of Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., with transformative support of up to $25 million over the next five years from the federal government. It establishes the Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology (CIROH), a national consortium of science and services to provide actionable water resources intelligence to improve a national water model and flood forecasting.

“UVM’s work with CIROH builds on a research foundation laid down by more than a decade of NSF EPSCOR support and many other projects brought to Vermont by Sen. Leahy,” said UVM VPR Kirk Dombrowski. “UVM’s involvement in CIROH will solidify our standing as a leading research university and promote exceptional research growth in environment and sustainability in the coming years.”

A $540,000 NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) grant allows Ruiguo Yang, a former Nebraska EPSCoR FIRST Award recipient and University of Nebraska-Lincoln assistant professor of mechanical and materials engineering, to examine how cell-cell junctions — the protein structures that enable cells to attach to neighboring cells — respond to the wide range of strains they're subjected to every day, such as cardiac pulses, stretching of the skin and peristalsis in the gut.