Health Foundation awards research grant

Time to read
1 minute
Read so far

Health Foundation awards research grant

Wed, 07/29/2020 - 14:14
Posted in:
Body

The Presbyterian Health Foundation has awarded nearly $4.6 million in biomedical research grants to the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation and the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OUHSC).

“We remain steadfastly committed to funding cuttingedge biomedical research on the Oklahoma Health Center campus,” said PHF President Tom R. Gray III. “The proposals presented this round were enthusiastically received by our Scientific Advisory Committee, in particular the collaborative and team science projects.”

A major funder of research programs at the Oklahoma Health Center, PHF has awarded more than $25 million to support biomedical research in Oklahoma since 2014.

The foundation received proposals for seed grants, bridge grants, equipment grants and collaborative and team science grants in the areas of cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases, plus a new area of emphasis, COVID-19. A total of 70 grants were approved and funded. At OMRF, a collaborative project is underway to discover how a viral pandemic like COVID-19 affects people living with multiple sclerosis (MS). Led by associate members of OMRF’s arthritis and clinical immunology program, Robert Axtell, Ph.D., and Susan Kovats, Ph.D., the project will investigate the severity of a respiratory virus in people with MS and provide insights into how to treat COVID-19 in people living with the disease.

“Many MS patients are on immune-modifying therapies to treat their MS-specific pathologies, but it is unclear if these MS therapies would help or hinder a viral infection like COVID-19,” said Axtell. “Susan and I are using our individual expertise in MS and viral infections to tackle this very question.”

Another project underway has scientists from OUHSC and Harvard University Medical Center (HUMC) joining efforts to study the connection between an infant’s microbiome and acquired immunity, which may be established during the first few days of life. The team of scientists include OUHSC researchers Jacob Friedman, Ph.D., Karen Jonscher, Ph.D., and HUMC researcher William Robins, Ph.D. The team is studying the impact of the developing immune system and resulting immune responses and metabolic disorders that may develop later in adulthood.