$11M federal grant offers research support

National Institutes of Health program targets states on low end of government funding

The National Institutes of Health on Monday announced an $11 million IDeA grant to Kansas University Medical Center to promote research in developmental biology.

“Developmental biology can have to do with the earliest events, from fertilization through the formation of different organ systems and perhaps even to wound healing,” said Dale Abrahamson, director of KUMC’s Anatomy and Cell biology department.

The Institutional Development Awards funding, which will continue for five years, will provide research support for five junior faculty for up to three years, before being used to recruit new faculty to the School of Medicine. The renewable grant is designed to increase NIH funds in 25 or so states that receive a low proportion of federal NIH dollars.

Five faculty – Hiroshi Nishimune, Pat Fields, Jay Vivian, Rajendra Kumar and Lane Christensen – are expected to compete for their own NIH funding, using this grant as a starting point. Once they earn their own grants, they’ll leave the program to be replaced by someone new.

“These are all existing faculty members but they’re all relatively new in their careers,” Abrahamson said. “When we learned that NIH was making this funding together, the co-directors and I got together and thought of how we could fashion a proposal and populate it with faculty we already have. These are tenured faculty the university has already committed to. I think that was viewed favorably (by NIH).”

Abrahamson said some grant money would be used to buy lab equipment and support some shared research equipment on the KUMC campus.

“By bridging the research funding gap in IDeA states, we are building innovative research teams, strengthening partnerships with the community, and leveraging the power of shared resources – ultimately improving the nation’s health,” NIH Director Elias Zerhouni said in a statement.

This is KUMC’s third IDeA grant. NIH limits each institution to three grants. One was given to KUMC last year and another recently was renewed. While the grants come from the same program, the focus for each is different.