Rush University Medical Center has been awarded 28 research grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Sciences Foundation, totaling more than $20 million through provisions in the American Revitalization and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). ARRA provides funds to advance scientific and medical knowledge while providing the resources to jump-start the U.S. economy.

“The success of our faculty in receiving these new and supplemental awards will be instrumental in generating new jobs at Rush and fueling economic activity not only in the West Loop, but throughout Metropolitan Chicago,” said Dr. James Mulshine, vice president and associate provost for research at Rush.

The grants awarded to Rush will provide investigational studies in asthma, Alzheimer's disease, orthopedics, liver disease, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, aging and other equally important areas of research. The 28 grants will provide funds for Rush to recruit new faculty, train new scientists and continue to enhance the Rush faculty's efforts to translate research outcomes from bench to bedside to community in Rush's areas of research strength. To date, the grants have supported 135 jobs at Rush.

According to Mulshine the availability of ARRA funding has been a catalyst for research at Rush: "Regardless of the ultimate level of funding Rush receives, this process stimulated new dialogues across our faculty and will result in research ideas that will move forward and bring new energy to our efforts to address our national health care crisis."

Some of these important studies include the following:

Professor Denis Evans, in the Department of Internal Medicine, was the recipient of a renewal of his Chicago Health and Aging Project (CHAP). The CHAP study collects data from a biracial cohort of residents, age 65 and older, from the South side of Chicago. The CHAP study which involves 10,000 subjects has been ongoing for over fifteen years focuses on the full continuum of cognitive decline in older age from very mild to very severe. The funding of approximately $8-million will allow the CHAP's team to re-contact all of the study participants to find out how they have fared over the last several years. Dr. Evans' research team in collaboration with investigators from the Broad Institute also received a Grand Opportunity Award to assess the associations of over 900,000 genetic markers with cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease among a large cohort of older African Americans in the Chicago Community. This study will identify genetic factors that are related to cognitive decline in this under-studied segment of the population and will be done in conjunction with a complementary study to be conducted by the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center led by Dr. David Bennett. These investments are a significant validation of the national importance of Alzheimer's research here at Rush.

Jennifer Weuve, ScD, MPH, assistant professor in the Rush Institute for Healthy Aging, has been awarded a grant to conduct an exploratory epidemiologic study of air pollution exposure in relation to cognitive decline among older women. Decline in cognitive function is an important health issue in older adults and strongly predicts whether an individual will eventually develop dementia. Since exposure to air pollution is a potential risk for cognitive decline, this study may offer findings that provide potential direction for reducing the risk of cognitive decline among a large high-risk population.

Dr. Molly Martin, assistant professor in pediatrics and preventive medicine, has been awarded an Exploratory/Developmental Grant to develop and test an intervention to improve asthma self management for Puerto Rican families with children diagnosed with asthma. Martin's research team will be providing a toolkit to modify symptoms and improve the health of children in this high-risk population in the Chicago Community. The data generated from this research study will improve the understanding of specific influences of asthma self-management, improve asthma control and provide pilot data on an intervention that may ultimately improve the management of this disease in high-risk populations that suffer disproportionately from asthma.

Dr. Ali Keshavarzian, vice chairman of medicine for academic and research affairs, has been awarded a Grant Opportunity Grant to investigate why only some alcoholics get alcoholic liver disease (ALD) using an approach called systems biology. Keshavarzian and his research team will look at samples from alcoholics with and without ALD as well as other patient groups and identify the alcohol-related profile of their intestinal bacteria and how it affects their metabolism and immune system. This analysis will allow the researchers to identify new kinds of alcohol-related biomarkers to help identify patients at risk for ALD and help provide treatment to ALD patients.

Dr. Dan Predescu, assistant professor of pharmacology, was awarded $150,000 over two years from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI). Predescu is examining the role a protein named caveolin plays in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a condition in which lung tissue becomes thick and stiff over time. About 50,000 new cases of IPF are diagnosed in the United States each year, and most people with the illness die three to five years after being diagnosed with it. The cause of the disease is unknown, and no cure exists for it.

David Williams, PhD, associate professor of immunology and microbiology, is examining the function that phytochelatin synthase plays in schistosomiasis, a chronic parasitic infection that affects about 200 million people, most of them in Africa. He recently received a grant for $412,000 over two years from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in support of his work. Schistosomiasis causes liver, bladder and intestinal damage that leads to about 280,000 deaths a year. Although a treatment for the illness exists, "there's only one drug, and there's nothing to fall back on if the parasite develops resistance to it," said Williams.

In all, Rush researchers have submitted 85 grant applications to the NIH requesting a total of $79 million in ARRA funding.  “It’s really energized our researchers,” said Mulshine.

In addition to the research grants, Rush was awarded $280,000 over the next two years for stipends, expenses and health insurance for five PhD students in neuroscience who will take special classes in aging outside the standard doctoral curriculum. Rush has received the student support for the past eight years from the National Institute of Aging, a part of the NIH, but the funding might not have been available this year without the additional stimulus package. Medical Center researchers also received two small grants that paid for summer jobs in Rush research labs for high school and college undergraduate students.

For more information on the ARRA funding grants at Rush, visit www.rushu.rush.edu