Grant program boosting biomedical research

FALLING INTO PLACE: Niall G. Howlett, associate professor in URI’s Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, works with Ph.D. candidate Rebecca Boisvert. Howlett received NIH funding in 2007 that has led to getting other grants and working with graduate students. / COURTESY URI/GIBLIN & CO.
FALLING INTO PLACE: Niall G. Howlett, associate professor in URI’s Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, works with Ph.D. candidate Rebecca Boisvert. Howlett received NIH funding in 2007 that has led to getting other grants and working with graduate students. / COURTESY URI/GIBLIN & CO.

For biomedical researcher Niall G. Howlett, getting $500,000 in startup funding to set up a laboratory seven years ago was critical to establishing roots to pursue research here in Rhode Island.
And like other researchers at universities around the state, Howlett, a University of Rhode Island associate professor of cell and molecular biology, found that getting that initial National Institutes of Health funding through the Institutional Development Award Network of Biomedical Research Excellence in Rhode Island, or INBRE, in 2007 led to getting other grants and working with graduate students who have the potential to become part of the state’s biomedical workforce.
“It’s been fantastic,” Howlett said recently. “I can’t stress how important it has been to Rhode Island. It attracts people to come here. It allows the hiring of people … and it does keep you here. It provides the startup money and it allows you to ‘find your feet.’ ”
Howlett’s area of expertise, Franconi anemia, is a rare disease caused by a defective gene that results in bone-marrow failure in young people. The gene also makes those who carry it more susceptible to cancer in their 20s. Howlett is working to identify a new Franconi anemia gene that could be important for cancer prevention.
“What I do always, if I’m not teaching, [is] I’m writing grant applications,” he said.
Three seed grants totaling more than $260,000 from other research funds and foundations led to a $400,000 NIH grant in 2008-09, he said. And the U.S. Department of Defense’s bone-marrow failure research program recently awarded Howlett more than $500,000 to continue his research, he said.
Nationally, INBRE is a competitive grant program intended to foster biomedical and behavioral research and enhance the competitiveness of those researchers at institutions in 23 states (and Puerto Rico) in which the success rate for applications to NIH has historically been low. In Rhode Island, URI is the lead institution for the INBRE program, applying for funding that assists researchers around the state, said Zahir A. Shaikh, URI’s professor of pharmacology and toxicology. He is the INBRE Rhode Island program director and principal investigator of the grant.
INBRE Rhode Island’s first award was $8 million for three years in 2001, Shaikh said. The second was a five-year renewal for $16 million and the third was a five-year renewal for $18 million. A new award is pending that could yield $20 million through 2019, he said.
Dr. James F. Padbury, pediatrician-in-chief and chief of neonatal/perinatal medicine at Women & Infants Hospital in Providence, said the hospital has benefited from studies of preeclampsia, a disease of pregnancy associated with hypertension in the mothers – studies funded in part through INBRE. Padbury is also professor of pediatrics and perinatal research at Brown University and vice chairman of research at Hasbro Children’s Hospital.
“Science is about discovery, luck and hard work, and it’s really hard to pick winners and losers,” said Padbury. “So, by having a grant with such a broad impact, it allows for the opportunity for fortuitous support of projects that otherwise might not have been able to be undertaken.”
Setting up a lab or proceeding with experiments to generate data for future research are some of the ways this funding helps faculty, Niall and Shaikh said.
All told, the $42 million that’s come into Rhode Island to date has led to an additional $47 million in independent grants received by the INBRE-supported faculty since 2001, Shaikh said.
“Our charge is to build capacity and infrastructure in biomedical research in the state,” said Shaikh.
“Faculty we’ve supported have brought in $47 million in federal funds over 13 years, so post-doctorate fellows and research technicians get hired as assistants to carry on the research projects. That’s a direct result of bringing in additional money.” INBRE Rhode Island partners with Brown, Providence College, Rhode Island College and Bryant University, Roger Williams University and Salve Regina University. Since 2001, the program has supported the research projects of 39 faculty members at URI, 16 at Brown, 15 at RIC, 15 at PC, 10 at Roger Williams, seven at Salve Regina and three at Bryant, Shaikh said.
The INBRE program has changed the culture at the primarily undergraduate institutions, Shaikh added, to the point where all of them have established research laboratories and research has become a part of the curriculum in the science departments.
At URI, at least four new faculty members have been hired as a result of INBRE support, Shaikh added, and the program has created two research faculty and three staff positions. He estimates that since 2001, 61 newly hired faculty have participated in INBRE: 22 at URI, 14 at Brown, 11 at PC, six at RIC, four at Salve Regina and two each at Roger Williams and Bryant.
“The prospect of receiving financial support from INBRE goes into consideration in hiring new faculty in the biomedical science disciplines at all network institutions,” he added.
Wei Lu, an assistant professor of biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences at URI, just won $1.3 million from NIH for cancer research – funding enabled by INBRE, Shaikh said.
At RIC, Steven Threlkeld, an assistant professor of psychology, is studying the anti-inflammatory effects of experimental drugs on neonatal brain injuries resulting from umbilical cord blockage or prolonged labor. He said an NIH grant he won last July for $329,762 is a direct result of work he did using INBRE funding.
“The INBRE program helped us get preliminary data,” he said, “but we had to apply for this [latest] NIH grant. … It was competitive.”
Threlkeld previously worked with Dr. Yow-Pin Lim of ProThera Biologics, an East Providence biomedical startup, and Dr. Barbara Stonestreet, director of the Fellowship in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine at Women & Infants Hospital. He’s also worked with about 11 students over time in his lab, he said. “Without the opportunity to acquire equipment and build a network in the state, we just wouldn’t be competitive,” Threlkeld said. “We’re just hoping we can capitalize on this and produce some data that will lead to some long-term benefit and applicability.”
“Many of the faculty that the program supports are brand new,” added Paul Larrat, interim dean of URI’s College of Pharmacy. “They have no mentors and no funding source. The INBRE program provides those pieces of infrastructure.”
Faculty have published more than 400 peer-review manuscripts and made more than 1,100 presentations with students, Shaikh added. About 1,000 undergraduate students, graduate students and post-doctorate fellows have participated in the past 13 years, he said.
“Many [students] have gone onto grad school here and elsewhere,” Shaikh said. “[But] the opportunities are limited in the state. Even though we’re training this many students, many end up going out of state, so we would like to reach out to industry that is looking for a biomedically trained workforce, and say, ‘What do you need?’ ”
Edward Hawrot, professor of medical science at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, who participates on the INBRE state steering committee, said INBRE has helped more colleges and universities in the state administer grants.
“It’s a great opportunity for undergraduates to experience first-hand research in biomedical areas,” he said of work that follows successful grant awards. “It’s not so much trying to make some sort of grant breakthrough. The project has to have scientific merit, but we’re trying to build the infrastructure in the state and hire faculty who are involved in biomedical research and reward them for doing this and training the workforce for the future.” •

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