Yesterday, the Boettcher Foundation presented grants to the inaugural class of the Webb-Waring Biomedical research program. The six investigators from Colorado institutions will receive between $200,000 and $300,000 each spread over the next three years to support their research efforts. According to Governor Bill Ritter, who was on hand to announce these awards represent “the Boettcher Foundation’s newest endeavor to improve quality of life in Colorado and around the country.”
The grants are targeted towards promising biomedical researchers early in their careers at a time when it ca be challenging for these investigators to attract NIH or private funds. Tim Shultz, President and Executive Director of the Boettcher Foundation, cited a statistic that on average scientists receive their first outside funding for independent research at the age of 44. Shultz noted that the new program is designed to specifically target this funding gap when modest grants can have a disproportionate impact in moving research forward and keeping the best talent in Colorado.
A brief summary of the research interests of each of the six awardees follows:
- Shaodong Dai, Assistant Professor of Immunology at National Jewish Health, is seeking to develop new treatments for chronic beryllium disease, which occurs from long term exposure to beryllium common in miners. Dai’s efforts in the treatment development draw on the knowledge that people with certain genetic variations in the HLA-DP subregion are much more likely to suffer from the disease than those without the variation given the same level of exposure.
- Robin Dowell, Assistant Professor of Molecular, Cell, and Development Biology at CU Boulder, seeks to draw on her computer science expertise to bring greater utility to the ability to sequence the genome. Specifically, Dowell seeks to use computational models to predict which parts of the genome will be transcribed.
- Gidon Felsen, Assistant Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus, investigates how the nervous system controls movement. His research will focus on exciting and inhibiting specific brain regions in both normal and Parkonsonian mice to evaluate the differences.
- Paul Jedlicka, Assistant Professor of Pathology at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus, is working to improve treatment for Ewing Sarcoma, one of the most common cancers of the bone and soft tissue in children and young adults. Jedlicka is evaluating specific microRNAs that are under or over represented in diseased cells leading to their cancerous behavior.
- Keith Neeves, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, is focused on understanding the mechanisms of blood clotting. Reeves will use the grant money to work on new anticoagulant strategies hoping to find ways to generate treatemnts that can still prevent the clots that cause strokes without increasing bleeding risks as much as current options do.
- Melissa Reynolds, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Colorado State University, is seeking to make implantable devices, specifically those for cardiovascular diseases, more biocompatible. Reynolds is focused on generating devices that release nitric oxide at similar levels to tissues within the body to prevent clotting.
