Research News

Leaders of the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust of Muscatine, Iowa, University of Iowa Health Care and the UI Foundation have announced a $2 million gift from the Carver Charitable Trust that will establish an operational endowment for the DNA Facility in the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine.

The proceeds from the operational endowment will support research projects, help to recruit and retain essential faculty and staff, and assist in the purchase of scientific instruments. Click to continue »

Nearly half of all birth defects involve the face and skull, but the causes of these problems remain largely unknown. To better understand — and ultimately prevent — such defects, a new project involving the University of Iowa will focus on creating a first-ever encyclopedic database on how the faces of healthy children develop and what goes wrong to cause defects.

The effort, called FaceBase, is a five-year initiative funded by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), part of the National Institutes of Health. Click to continue »

Three University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine researchers have each received a one-year, $30,000 American Cancer Society seed grant through Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center at the UI. The awards were effective Nov. 1. Click to continue »

A leading cellular neuroscientist will speak as part of the Carver College of Medicine’s Distinguished Biomedical Lecture Series.  Pietro, De Camilli, MD, Eugene Higgins Professor of Cell Biology and Neurobiology at Yale University will present “Molecular Mechanisms of Endocystosis” on Thursday, November 19 at 4 p.m.  De Camilli’s talk is also the Department of Pharmacology’s 2009 Michael J. Brody Memorial Lecture.

Pietro De Camilli received his MD from the University of Milan, Italy in 1972 and performed his postdoctoral training in pharmacology at Yale University. Following postdoctoral training, De Camilli joined faculty of Yale from 1979 to 1981.  De Camilli then served on the faculty of the University of Milan before returning to Yale in 1988, becoming professor of cell biology and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in 1992. Click to continue »

The Carver College of Medicine Flow Cytometry Facility has been awarded almost $500,000 by the National Institutes of Health for the purchase of an additional high-speed cell sorter.

“The addition of the new sorter will increase our capacity to serve investigators, and along with upgrades made to other equipment, will maintain the facility’s state-of-the-art status moving forward,” said Zuhair Ballas, MD, professor of internal medicine, facility director and principal investigator on the shared instrumentation grant. Click to continue »

Alexander Horswill, PhD, assistant professor of microbiology has been selected by the American Society for Microbiology to receive a Merck Irving S. Sigal Memorial Award.  The award is one of only two such awards to be conferred by the society in 2010.

The Merck Irving S. Sigal Memorial Award recognizes excellence in basic research in medical microbiology and infectious diseases.  The award is given annually to newer investigators no more than five years beyond completion of their postdoctoral training.  Horswill completed his postdoctoral training at Penn State University and joined the faculty of the UI in 2005.

Horswill will be presented with the award at the general meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in May 2010.

Two researchers in the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine have been renewed for another five years as investigators of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). Both researchers, Kevin Campbell, Ph.D., and Michael Welsh, M.D., have been HHMI investigators since 1989.

Based in Maryland, the institute was founded in 1953 by aviator-industrialist Howard Hughes to promote the basic sciences and the effective application of findings to benefit humankind. Click to continue »

A new study suggests that the inner sense of our cardiovascular state, our “interoceptive awareness” of the heart pounding, relies on two independent pathways, contrary to what had been asserted by prominent researchers.

The University of Iowa study was published online this week in the journal Nature Neuroscience by researchers in the department of neurology in the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine and the graduate programs in neuroscience and psychology.

The researchers found that, in addition to a pathway involving the insular cortex of the brain — the target of most recent research on interoception — an additional pathway contributing to feeling your own heartbeat exists. The second pathway goes from fibers in the skin to most likely the somatosensory cortex, a part of the brain involved in mapping the outside of the body and the sense of posture. Click to continue »

University of Iowa President Sally Mason announced today a $26.4 million gift commitment from longtime UI benefactors John and Mary Pappajohn of Des Moines — the largest single gift commitment ever for the UI from individual Iowa donors — and said it will provide the university’s new interdisciplinary Institute for Biomedical Discovery with “the catalyst it needs to reach its full potential.”

In recognition of the Pappajohns’ gift, the institute will be named the Pappajohn Institute, and the building that houses it the John and Mary Pappajohn Biomedical Discovery Building. The Board of Regents, State of Iowa, approved the naming of the institute and the building at its meeting today in Cedar Falls. Click to continue »

The University of Iowa has received a $100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The grant will support an innovative global health research project conducted by Craig Morita, M.D., Ph.D., faculty member in the UI Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, to create a vaccine against microbes that cause diarrhea.

Morita’s project is one of 76 grants announced Tuesday by the Gates Foundation in the third funding round of the Grand Challenges Explorations. This five-year, $100-million-dollar initiative aims to help scientists worldwide explore innovative, new ways to improve health in developing countries. Grants in this round were awarded to scientists in 16 countries on five continents. The initiative is highly competitive, receiving almost 3,000 proposals for this round. Click to continue »