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(from on-line media reports)
Four recent million-dollar awards from the federal government to Indiana University will advance medical research in four significant areas.
The most recent is a $1 million award through Congress that will establish the Midwest Proton Radiation Institute (MPRI), the first cancer treatment center of its type in the Midwest, at the IU Cyclotron Facility in Bloomington.
A consortium of physicians and scientists from throughout the Midwest will form the MPRI, providing increased accessibility for patients from a number of population areas.
"This is good news in our efforts to provide the citizens of Indiana with an outstanding proton therapy facility," said George Walker, IU vice president for research and dean of the University Graduate School (RUGS). "The investment in this project will provide great dividends to both the university and the citizens of the state."
John Cameron, director of the IU Cyclotron Facility, said that the money is the first received by the facility from the federal government for proton therapy. "As such, it is very important in that it will allow us to move the project from the design stage into the conversion of the existing facility."
There currently are two proton therapy facilities in the nation, one in California and one in Massachusetts. The cyclotron has operated for more than 25 years as a member of the world network of major accelerator facilities for research in sub-atomic physics.
At the IU School of Medicine (IUSM), three multi-million dollar grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have been awarded.
Six million dollars from NIH will provide for the largest nationwide study ever conducted on the genetics of Parkinson's disease. IUSM will serve as the coordinating site for the study which will be conducted at more than 40 medical centers and institutions in the U.S. and Canada. Nearly 50,000 patients will be screened by the Parkinson's Study Group, a nationwide network of neurologists specializing in Parkinson's disease. From the screenings, 400 pairs of siblings, both of whom are affected with Parkinson's disease, will be identified to participate in the genetic study. By studying siblings, researchers will be able to identify chromosomal regions that affected siblings consistently share at higher rates than expected by chance. P. Michael Conneally, IU Distinguished Professor of medical and molecular genetics and of neurology, is the principal investigator. Other IU investigators are Dr. Eric Siemers, neurology, and Dr. Joanne M. Wojcieszek, neurology.
Tatiana Foroud, medical and molecular genetics, and psychiatry, will perform the data analyses. DNA screening will be conducted at Children's Hospital in Cincinnati.
Parkinson's disease is a degenerative neurological disease. Symptoms include slowness of body movements, tremor, stooped posture, muscular stiffness (rigidity), short shuffling steps and poor balance.
The NIH has also awarded IUSM $7 million to create the nation's only sexually transmitted disease center focusing solely on adolescents. Dr. Donald Orr, director of the Section of Adolescent Medicine at IUSM and a pediatrician at Riley Hospital, said the long- term goals of the newly established Mid-America Adolescent Sexually Transmitted Disease Cooperative Research Center is to understand what adolescents and parents can do to increase protection and decrease risk for sexually transmitted disease (STD) in teens.
NIH also has renewed funds for a project first awarded in 1994. IUSM researchers received a $4.15 million, five-year grant to continue research into the long-term effects of shock wave lithotripsy in the treatment of kidney stones.
To read more about these initiatives, go to the following sites.
Midwest Proton Radiation Institute:
http://www.iuinfo.indiana.edu/ocm/releases/proton.wpd.htm
Mid-America Adolescent Sexually Transmitted Disease Cooperative Research Center:
http://medicine.indiana.iupui.edu/astcenter.htm
Parkinson's Study Group:
http://medicine.indiana.iupui.edu/grant6.htm
Shockwave lithotripsy:
http://medicine.indiana.iupui.edu/shocklith.htm
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