Though the College of Medicine benefitted enormously from the NIH budget doubling between 1998 and 2003 and saw its highest level of funding ever in FY2010 due in large part to the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA), securing biomedical research grants became markedly more competitive with $260 million in cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) FY 2011 budget this past April. Despite these challenges, University of Vermont College of Medicine investigators were able to secure $77.5 million in external grant funding in FY2011, representing more than 60 percent of the external grant funding received at the University. A total of 303 projects led by 143 UVM College of Medicine investigators were supported.

According to Senior Associate Dean Ira Bernstein, M.D., the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in particular had very high thresholds, with only those individuals scoring in the top sixth percentile receiving awards. Two UVM College of Medicine investigators achieved significant funding in the face of this extreme competition: Susan Wallace, Ph.D., professor and chair of microbiology and molecular genetics, who led a group of investigators with an interest in basic cancer biology in a successful renewal of her program project submission “Structure and Function of DNA Repair Enzymes”, a five-year, $8 million-plus grant. Berta Geller, Ed.D., professor of family medicine, led a successful multi-investigator effort to obtain a PROSPR (Population-based Research Optimizing Screening through Personalized Regimens) grant. This new NCI program aims to support research that provides a better understanding of how to improve the screening process for breast, colon, and cervical cancer. Geller’s project, which will focus on the use of mammography for breast cancer, is titled “The Vermont PROSPR Research Center” and will be funded for five years for approximately $4.5 million. Geller recently learned that another $5 million multi-investigator program project application titled “Risk-Based Breast Cancer Screening in Community Settings” will also be funded over a five-year period.

Other successful investigators at the College of Medicine include Mark Nelson, Ph.D., professor and chair of pharmacology, whose new program project award, titled “Calcium Signaling in the Cerebrovascular Unit in Health and Disease,” will be funded for five years for more than $10 million dollars. A competitively renewed five-year grant titled “Cardiac Myosin Binding Protein-C: Structure, Function and Regulation,” led by David Warshaw, Ph.D., professor and chair of molecular physiology and biophysics, will provide $10 million in support in the area of cardiovascular medicine. The Center of Biomedical Research Excellence Award for the Center of Immunology and Infectious Disease, led by Ralph Budd, M.D., professor of medicine, was successfully renewed by the NIH’s National Center for Research Resources with a five-year award worth over $10 million.

“College of Medicine investigators have continued to demonstrate just how competitive they are at NIH for funding opportunities, despite a reduced overall number of grants awarded by NIH this past year and a cut in the NIH budget in real dollars,” says Bernstein.

For more specific information about FY2011 funding at the College of Medicine, visit the UVM Sponsored Project Administration website at http://www.uvm.edu/spa/?Page=annualreports.html and look for the Awards by College and Department subhead.