Research Funding Increases 14 Percent to $269 Million
Researchers at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine have been awarded $268.7 million in funding from external sources in fiscal year 2008, a 14 percent increase over fiscal year 2007, and following a 17 percent increase between 2007 and 2006. The majority of the research support comes from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
“I am very pleased with the growth in research,” says J. Larry Jameson, MD, PhD, vice president for medical affairs and Lewis Landsberg Dean, Feinberg School of Medicine. “This success reflects our innovative and collaborative culture. Importantly, this research support provides our investigators with an opportunity to make discoveries that will advance human knowledge and health.”
Several 2008 NIH awards to the Feinberg School are groundbreaking for clinical and translational research including a:
⢠$32 million contract to serve as the Greater Chicago Study Center for the National Children’s Study. This project, the largest study of child and human health ever conducted in the U. S., will examine the effects of environmental influences on the health and development of more than 100,000 children following them from before birth until age 21.
⢠$31 million contract for an ambitious national project that will structurally characterize a gallery of 375 proteins associated with infectious diseases over the next five years. The payoff could be a wave of new medicines to treat infectious diseases that remain an important scourge for mankind.
⢠$21 million grant for a landmark national research, clinical, and education program that seeks to preserve fertility in women undergoing cancer treatment.
⢠$3.6 million grant to investigate the factors that influence the differentiation of human embryonic stem cells and evaluate combining unique biomaterials and human embryonic stem cells as a possible means to repair damaged spinal cords.
The Feinberg School received more than 61 percent of the Northwestern University total of $438.8 million in extramural research support. This is the second year of double-digit growth in this area of funding at the medical school.
“This kind of performance in an environment of flat NIH funding is a tribute to the quality and dedication of our faculty,” says Rex Chisholm, PhD, dean for research and Adam and Richard T. Lind Professor of Medical Genetics. “The breadth of basic and clinical and translational projects that has been funded shows the strong mix of research activity at the Feinberg School of Medicine.”