Stimulus Grants to School of Medicine and Public Health: $10 Million and Climbing

MADISON - A $1.2 million stimulus grant will allow Wisconsin scientists to study whether meditation or exercise can help prevent the flu.

The grant is just one of dozens of UW School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) projects being funded through the the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Stimulus grants will buy a new $449,000 flow cytometer for cancer researchers working in the Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Rearch, help create a new animal model for breast and colon cancer, and study the inner workings of the eye.

Dr. Bruce Barrett had already received high scores from the National Institutes of Health for his proposal to study whether exercise or meditation can reduce the public-health burden of acute respiratory infection. But the money became available only after Congress passed the stimulus act.

"It's absolutely wonderful, we've been able to hire four people and we've had a tremendous response to our call for participants," said principal investigator Barrett, an associate professor of family medicine.

Barrett became interested in the topic after seeing an earlier study by SMPH and Waisman Center researcher Dr. Richard Davidson, which showed an enhanced immune response to influenza vaccination (flu shots) among people practicing meditation techniques.

"The money is not really the most important part," said Barrett, who has been studying respiratory-infection prevention for years. "Every year 36,000 deaths and about a half million hospitalizations are caused by the flu in the U.S. And flu shots are only about 50 to 60 percent effective. So if we can increase the effectiveness of the shot, we can save many thousands of lives."

Barrett's grant is one of $10.8 million in ARRA funds received so far by SMPH researchers. As of Sept. 1, 36 grants have been awarded to SMPH faculty, with more in the pipeline.

"The stimulus grants are providing critical support in development of infrastructure for research, hiring new faculty and staff, and launching research initiatives," says Dr. Rick Moss, SMPH senior associate dean for basic research, biotechnology, and graduate studies. "As a consequence of the increased funding provided by these grants, the pace of discovery in our research programs will be greatly accelerated."

The school is still awaiting word on ARRA grants that could help build the second phase of the Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research (WIMR) complex. The first few floors of the second tower were already built during the construction of WIMR phase one, which opened a year ago, and WIMR phase 2's design has already been approved by the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents and the State Building Commission.

SMPH applied for C06 construction grants that could help complete two floors of WIMR phase 2 for research into regenerative medicine, neurosciences and cardiovascular medicine. It also applied for G20 grants, which could be used to finish facilities that serve researchers throughout the complex, including a center for proteomics and molecular diagnosis.

Campuswide, 732 proposals totaling more than $444 million were made by UW-Madison faculty to nine different federal agencies this spring. At least 13 more awards totaling an additional $7.1 million are in the process of being set up.

Some of the SMPH projects funded by ARRA include:

• $731,340 over two years for Dr. Paul Kaufman, chair of ophthalmology and visual sciences, to study aqueous humor dynamics plus another $7,425 supplemental grant for science education.
• $371,250 over two years for Dr. Laura Knoll, associate professor of medical microbiology, and immunology, for the creation of a tissue culture model for Toxoplasm a gondii sexual development.
• $734,740 over two years to Dr. William Dove, professor of oncology in the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, to study the progression to colon cancer in a spectrum of pathways (Dove also received another $31,025 for a rat genetic model for familial human colon cancer.)
• $734,740 over two years to Dr. Sinisa Dovat, assistant professor of pediatrics, to study the role of zinc finger genes in leukemogenesis.
• $321,877 over six months to Dr. Susan Thibeault, assistant professor of surgery (otolaryngology), to engineer the vocal fold extracellular matrix plus another $586,456 over two years for mucosal immunological and bacterial characterization in chronic laryngitis.

To see a campus wide total of ARRA grants, go to: http://stimulus.wisc.edu/