Home > About BNE > Press Room > 2009 Archive > June > More 'stim' funds for RPCI, UB

More 'stim' funds for RPCI, UB

by Tracey Drury

The funding, announced by members of the Western New York congressional delegation, is from the National Institutes of Health comes through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Grants include:

 
• $356,346 for a Roswell research project on overcoming therapy resistance for lymphoma patients;

• $145,399 for a Roswell study that looks at race and patterns of how parents navigate the health care community after a child is diagnosed with cancer;

• $335,208 for Roswell researchers to study of biomarkers in cancer prognosis, progression and metastasis;

• $297,488 for a Roswell study on allergic airway inflammation and drug development;

• $191,544 for a study at UB that tests whether patient race or gender affect immunosuppression drug responses in kidney transplant recipients;

• $20,478 to UB for student and/or teacher summer research at NIH funded labs.

Candace Johnson, Roswell’s deputy director and senior vice president for translational research, says the institution is especially excited that many of these grants were previously submitted and just missed the cut-off, due in part to stagnant federal funding to the NIH budget. Without the additional stimulus dollars, these researchers would likely not have been funded.

“The regular grants are still being funded from the regular pot of funding, but these are additional awards. It’s fantastic,” she says. “Everyone is so hopeful. Hopefully we can get science back on track.”

Johnson expects to hear about additional grant awards that have been provisionally approved; as well as grant requests have been submitted in the past several weeks specifically for the stimulus funds.

The Recovery Act included $10.4 billion for the National Institutes of Health, including $8.2 billion for scientific research priorities.

In April, the two organizations received a combined $2.2 million in stimulus grants for research and technology initiatives.