Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center at The University of Iowa and the Cancer Research Alliance have teamed up to provide HOPE this holiday season. Starting Nov. 14, you can click here to shop at hundreds of major retailers while helping fight cancer at the same time. A percentage of each purchase will fund groundbreaking cancer research that will help save lives.

Some of the retailers you will find include:

•    Target
•    Amazon
•    Best Buy
•    Nordstrom’s
•    Barnes & Noble
•    Gap/Gapkids.com
•    Nikestore.com

The Cancer Research Alliance is a non-profit organization made up of 11 of the top cancer research institutions in the United States. The organization fights all cancers and is working to develop new therapies and protocols across the board including therapies that more precisely target any cancer without damaging surrounding tissue; treatments that are tailored to a patient’s molecular profile; and vaccines that teach the body’s immune system to seek out cancer cells and destroy them with little to no side effects.

Join Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Cancer Research Alliance this holiday season and give something more powerful than presents…give hope. For more information, contact Carol Jefferson.

Leaders of The Fraternal Order of Eagles, The University of Iowa and the UI Foundation announced on Tuesday, Sept. 16, a $25 million gift commitment from the Eagles that will fund diabetes research at the UI.

In recognition of the generosity of the Eagles’ international membership, the UI will establish The Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center in the new UI Institute for Biomedical Discovery (UIIBD).

“We are thrilled by this extraordinary commitment from The Fraternal Order of Eagles,” said UI President Sally Mason. “This partnership demonstrates our shared desire to understand and ultimately cure diabetes by moving research findings into the clinical setting as quickly as possible. We are grateful for the Eagles’ vote of confidence in our research enterprise, and we pledge to meet and even exceed their expectations in the years ahead.”

The UI-Fraternal Order of Eagles partnership is unique in that it represents the first time the University has joined forces with the nearly one-million-member philanthropic organization. In addition to its strengths in diabetes research, the UI brings to the collaboration the facilities of its new Institute for Biomedical Discovery, so that The Fraternal Order of Eagles’ philanthropy can be devoted entirely to programmatic support of pioneering research.

Photo Gallery

(more…)

To date, most research on childhood hearing loss has focused on severe to profound hearing loss that constitutes deafness. But a five-year, $8.9 million grant to the University of Iowa from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, part of the National Institutes of Health, will help further research on milder hearing loss in preschool children.

The grant will help UI researchers, along with colleagues at Boys Town National Research Hospital in Nebraska and the University of North Carolina, explore whether educational and audiological services and aids can improve outcomes for young children with mild and moderate hearing disorders.

“It’s obviously been very important to study the communication challenges faced by children who are deaf and determine how to help them gain communication skills. However, much less is known about the impact of milder forms of hearing loss on children’s ability to communicate, succeed in school, and have good social and psychological development,” said explained the grant’s principal investigator Dr. J. Bruce Tomblin, UI professor of communication sciences and disorders in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

In addition to Tomblin, who also holds the D.C. Spriesterbach Distinguished Professorship of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dr. Mary Pat Moeller, director of childhood deafness at Boys Town National Research Hospital, is serving as the study’s co-principal investigator.

UI researchers involved in the study are Drs. Lenore Holte, UI clinical professor with the Center for Disabilities and Development; John Knutson, UI professor of psychology; Ruth Bentler, UI professor of communication sciences and disorders; Sandie Bass-Ringdahl, UI assistant professor of communication sciences and disorders; Jake Oleson, UI assistant professor of biostatistics, and Jane Pendergast, UI professor of biostatistics.

Full news release.

Dr. Beverly Davidson, UI professor of internal medicine, neurology, and molecular physiology and biophysics, and Roy J. Carver Biomedical Research Chair in Internal Medicine, is among the first group of scientists to receive a EUREKA award from the National Institutes of Health.

The new funding program, called EUREKA for Exceptional, Unconventional Research Enabling Knowledge Acceleration, aims to support exceptionally innovative research that could have a large impact on many areas of science. In this first round of funding, 38 scientists will share $42.2 million for projects that test new, often unconventional hypotheses or tackle major methodological or technical challenges.

Davidson will receive approximately $200,000 per year for up to four years to develop an RNA-based strategy for getting material into the brain without the need for a direct injection.

Preliminary work from Davidson’s lab has shown that certain RNA-based molecules, injected into the tail vein of a mouse, could reach the brain. Davidson hopes to build on this approach, in collaboration with Dr. James McNamara, UI associate in internal medicine, to deliver RNA-based molecules to targeted areas of the brain.

Davidson’s project is funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), a component of the NIH. NINDS awarded five EUREKA awards in this first round of funding.

Full news release.

Dr. Neil Segal, assistant professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation, has received a five-year, $1.18 million grant from the Paul B. Beeson Career Development Awards in Aging Research Program. Segal was one of only 13 physicians honored with Beeson grants this year.

Established in 1995, the Beeson program provides faculty development awards to outstanding junior and mid-career faculty committed to academic careers in aging related research, training and practice. The program is funded by several organizations including the John A. Hartford Foundation, the Atlantic Philanthropies, the Starr Foundation and the National Institute on Aging.

With this grant, Segal aims to advance treatment of knee osteoarthritis and to reduce disablement in older adults with knee osteoarthritis. In particular, this research will focus on the effects of two rehabilitation interventions on mobility limitations, knee-specific disability, thigh muscle composition, impairments in leg power and quality of life, in a study that will begin in August. The results of this work may lead to more effective rehabilitation and may determine which older adults with painful or stiff knee osteoarthritis will be most likely to benefit from particular rehabilitative interventions.

Segal joined the UI faculty in 2004. He received a medical degree from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tenn., and completed his residency in physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

UI cancer researcher Kristina Wyatt Thiel is the 2007-2008 recipient of the two-year, $100,000 postdoctoral fellowship awarded by the National Ladies Auxilliary to the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States. Thiel is a postdoctoral research fellow in cardiology.

Thiel’s research project focuses on preventing certain kinds of breast cancer cells from becoming immune to therapies like Herceptin, a drug that has helped to significantly increase a patient’s chance to fight off the disease.

She has identified an agent that, once inside the tumor, will block the cancer cell from survival mode, and her research will be looking for safe ways to get that agent into the cell. Thiel also hopes that her research results will help develop therapies for other human diseases.

University of Iowa Children’s Hospital in Iowa City is one of six children’s hospitals in the United States selected to receive a $100,000 grant from the National Association of Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions to develop a Safe Escape Program. The grant will allow UI Children’s Hospital to offer families of children with disabilities and special health care needs education, information and equipment to prepare for safe escape during emergencies.

“We are thrilled to have received such a generous grant that will allow us to provide safety tools and resources focused on emergencies and evacuation to families who are often overwhelmed by their children’s daily needs,” said Michael Artman, M.D., physician-in-chief at UI Children’s Hospital. “These families often do not have the resources or training to plan for emergencies or natural disasters.”

Full news release.

The UI Department of Pediatrics has been awarded a five-year, $2.1 million grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to continue a mentorship project that helps junior faculty members embark on research careers. The grant renews support that has been in place since 1990 and resulted in the training of 26 UI clinician-scientists in pediatrics. They learn research skills to study the underlying mechanisms of conditions such as prematurity, heritable disorders such as hemophilia and cystic fibrosis, and adult-onset diseases that are thought to have fetal origins. Known as “scholars,” the trainees also gain the skills needed to ultimately secure their own grant funding.

“Science is more complicated and challenging than ever before, so the program is essential to developing the next generation of leaders in pediatric science and health,” said Dr. Michael Artman, physician-in-chief of UI Children’s Hospital and principal investigator for the grant. “In particular, the program involves experts across departments and colleges who serve as research mentors for the scholars. We are excited that the grant will renew efforts to help physicians, who are clinically trained, to develop the skills necessary to succeed as clinician-scientists.”

The grant is titled “Molecular and Cellular Research to Advance Child Health” and emphasizes developmental biology, applied genetics and genomics, animal models of human disease and translational research. In addition to taking advantage of strengths of UI Health Care and UI colleges and centers, the training funded by the grant will involve the new UI Institute for Clinical and Translational Science. The program also involves eight UI internal advisors and three external advisors at other institutions.

Read more about this program.

The Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Iowa recently received a grant of $44,295 from the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF). The funds will support a program that uses the Iowa Communications Network (ICN) to link cancer specialists at Holden with 15 communities in southeast Iowa.

The project is called, “Cancer Survivorship: Ask the Experts.” Organizers are planning to hold three classes via the ICN. The course topics will include: “Living and Eating Healthy During and After Cancer Treatment” in August 2008; “Benefits of Physical Activity for Cancer Survivors and How to Find and Evaluate Reliable Health Information” in November 2008; and “Late Effects/Side Effects and the Importance of Follow-up Care for the Cancer Survivor” in March 2009.

Joan Felkner, director of the Cancer Information Service at Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center, is the principal investigator on the grant. Other contributors to the grant include Keri Mercer, Pat Crile and Michael Lin, a fourth-year medical student in the UI Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine and a cancer survivor.

To read the full news release, click here.

Terpenoid Therapeutics Inc., a University of Iowa spinout company based in Coralville, Iowa, has earned $224,000 in commercialization grants from the National Cancer Institute. The company was awarded two Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grants, which are administered through the Small Business Administration.

Drug development at Terpenoid Therapeutics Inc. is based on research from the UI departments of Chemistry, Pharmacology, and Internal Medicine and Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center at the UI. The company was founded by Drs. Raymond J. Hohl, associate chair of internal medicine, and David F. Wiemer, chair of the Department of Chemistry in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Hohl and Wiemer, who have been interdisciplinary research collaborators for well over a decade, both hold appointments in the Department of Pharmacology.

The company has two broad drug development projects, both aimed at treating cancer. The first lead molecule is based on targets within the cholesterol metabolic pathway and is intended to treat metastatic bone disease associated with prostate and breast cancer and multiple myeloma. The second lead is being developed to treat brain cancers. “We believe drugs derived from both of these projects have the strong potential to improve outcomes for patients with these diseases, and will improve quality of care by having fewer side effects than existing agents,” says Jeff Neighbors, a founder of Terpenoid and an assistant research scientist at the UI.

To read the full press release, click here.