UAMS scores $11M in NIH research cash

Grant a lure for new faculty; focus on infectious disease

An $11 million federal grant will help support five new research projects on infectious diseases at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock.

The grant, from an arm of the National Institutes of Health, is the second for a program that aids research on pathogens, bacteria, viruses and other microorganisms. Mark Smeltzer, a UAMS professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and Department of Orthopaedics, received an initial grant of $10 million in 2012 that supported projects on viruses and malaria and helped create the Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence.

The work comes at a pivotal time when humans are finding new pathogens and, for bacteria specifically, those resistant to antibiotics, Smeltzer said.

"I mean, who heard of Zika before the last year or so?" he asked, referring to the mosquito-borne virus. "In bacteriology, we are running out of antibiotics. I tell all the medical students this -- and I mean it -- that if I could somehow transport myself into the future for, let's say 100 years, and ask physicians what kind of antibiotics are they using, they would be completely different than what we have now. If I could then reverse that and bring that antibiotic back, if I looked for it, I'd find a strain of bacteria resistant to it within the week. It's inevitable.

"Yes, we need new antibiotics, but you are going to get resistance to them, which in my mind means we need new approaches -- global approaches that take into account the human aspect and the host response. We have to be prepared for these things."

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The grants have three sequential phases, each five years long, according to the website. The first phase earmarks grant money for junior research faculty members, or those who have not led their own research project. The junior researchers, with mentors at hand, will use the funds to establish research infrastructure and start gathering preliminary data to successfully compete for another research grant in their own name, the website said.

Karl Boehme, now an assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at UAMS, was one of the junior faculty members in 2012 who received a chunk of the grant for his project studying the reovirus, which is from the same family as an ailment that causes diarrhea in children.

Boehme was completing his post-doctoral work at Vanderbilt University in Nashville when he began looking for a faculty position. In part, the grant helped lure him here, he said.

"You've got to have money to do science ...," he said. "It's almost an arms race: Whoever has the best tools can do the best science, and this allowed us to at least have a little bit of a chip in the game there to ... get some new instrumentation. You put all those things together, and it makes a very inviting environment, along with great colleagues."

Normally, incoming faculty members scramble to get an initial grant, he said. Because of the grant, Boehme said he had "protected time" to make sure he got off on the right foot, and he got to explore further in the field than he normally would have.

His work focuses on viral bloodstream infections and how pathogens enter the body at one site -- in his studies, the gut -- and get into the bloodstream, "the superhighway to get everywhere else in the body." He added a little fishing expedition to the project: using reovirus to fight cancer cells.

With the money, Boehme hired a lab technician and two students and started generating data. The preliminary data showed that if the virus made a protein, it would move into the bloodstream, and his lab -- now with a "hallmark NIH grant" called an RO1 -- will look more closely into how exactly it gets into the bloodstream, he said. He's also found some promising leads in using the virus against lung cancer cells, he said.

Throughout the whole process, Boehme had four mentors to help with both the science and administrative side of things. He had weekly working group sessions, where teams would present their studies and receive feedback from other teams. He would face a four-person national external advisory committee, which ultimately decides whether to pull the strings on research projects.

"As a scientist, it's easy to just live in a vacuum," he said. "You know that image of a scientist off in a corner in a white coat doing what he does? But you know, because of this, we have the opportunity to get out and interact" with others.

He and two others -- Jason Stumhofer, an assistant professor, and Craig Forrest, an associate professor -- were recipients of the Phase One grant, have successfully "graduated" from the original grant and received the hallmark NIH five-year grant, called RO1, to continue their research, Smeltzer said.

The researchers have received a nearly dollar-to-dollar return with another $11 million in separate grants to further their projects, he said.

"The idea is that you build a critical mass," Smeltzer said. "You bring in these junior people. You have more senior people to advise them. Then you slowly merge their work with maybe more senior people. What you're hoping for is that synergy will result, and that's starting to happen for us."

Phase Two of the grant will include projects on:

• Cancer, with a team led by Ruud Dings, an assistant professor in UAMS' Department of Radiation Oncology.

• Lyme disease, with a team led by Jon Blevins, an associate professor in the microbiology and immunology department.

• Pneumonic plague, by a team led by Roger Pechous, assistant professor in the microbiology and immunology department.

• Chlamydial infection, with a team led by Lin-Xi Li, also an assistant professor in the microbiology and immunology department.

The second phase, according to the NIH, is to again build research infrastructure and start building a "critical mass" of investigators collaborating on research projects. The third and final phase helps maintain what was put together in the first two phases and helps transition centers to be self-sustaining.

UAMS currently holds three of the NIH grants, with one -- the Center for Tranlsational Neuroscience, led by Edgar Garcia-Rill -- in the last phase with $22.5 million in funding, the academic medical center said. The other -- the Center for Studies of Host Response to Cancer Therapy, led by Dr. Martin Hauer-Jensen -- is also in the first phase with $10.5 million in funding, UAMS said.

Metro on 06/12/2017

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