The University's Medical School received a $38 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, officials announced yesterday. It is the largest grant received from NIH in the school's history. The grant money is intended for in-depth research on cell migration.
The goal of cell migration research is to further understand diseases such as cancer, arthritis and osteoporosis.
The money is a five-year "glue" grant that will be used to bring together a consortium of 11 academic medical centers to collaborate on research. A glue grant works to combine 30 researchers with diverse talents on one project.
Cell Biology Prof. Alan F. "Rick" Horwitz will be the grant's principal investigator and Microbiology Department Chairman J. Thomas Parsons will act as the co-principal investigator.
"Most people who have cancer don't die from primary tumors but from tumor spread - that's a migration problem," Horwitz said in a press release.
According to Horwitz, this particular project is unique because of the diverse group of researchers involved. The specialties of the consortium members range from biology to mathematics.
Parsons and Horwitz created the idea while on a skiing trip. They realized that a project of such magnitude would take many people with diverse skills. "It became clear to us that it required multi interdisciplinary subjects," Horwitz said.
Ochs said the grant proposal that he and Horowitz submitted to NIH underwent a great deal of scrutany before finally being approved.
Now that the Medical School has received the grant, the consortium faces the overwhelming task of beginning its research. Horwitz and Parsons agreed that the first step will be to allocate funds to the team of researchers.
"Our first job is to get money into their hands so they can start doing science as fast as possible," Parsons said.
While both men said they were very excited with the prospect of taking on a project such as this one, they also said they were uncertain about its success.
"My analogy is like the Redskins," Horwitz said. "We have 30 excellent players, but we don't know for sure if we can do it."
Horwitz noted that as the principal investigator, he faces broad objectives such as guiding scientific progress and defining goals.
Despite any reservations the investigators may have about the project, Horwitz and Parsons are confident of their roles in working with their 30-member research group.
"We are trying to get them to interact and get research done that would not normally be done," Horwitz said. "We are pioneering the large-scale interdisciplinary science"
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