IU School of Medicine gets record $189M in NIH research funding

Studying early-on Alzheimer’s disease in adults in their 40s and 50s. Recruiting minority patients to study the effects of pain control. Consolidating databases to analyze treatment of HIV/AIDS.

These medical studies and dozen more at the Indiana University School of Medicine helped the school raise $189.3 million last year, up 26% from a year earlier, from the federal National Institutes of Health.

That helped the medical school set a school record for NIH funding for the fourth straight year. The grants ranged in size from $6,000 to $14.47 million, and covered almost every aspect of medicine from neurology and psychiatry to anesthesiology and emergency medicine.

The NIH is the lead federal agency responsible for biomedical and public health research.

The increase propels the IU School of Medicine to 14^th out of 92 public medical schools that receive NIH funding (up from 16^th place a year ago), and 28^th out of 145 medical schools overall (up from 33^rd place).

Here are 10 projects that received the largest grants:

• $14.47 million: A two-year observational study designed to look at disease progression in adults with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Lead researcher: Dr. Liana Apostolova.
• $11.16 million: A program to store and provide DNA, plasma and brain tissue and other biological materials to help research in Alzheimer’s disease. Lead researcher: Dr. Tatiana Foroud.
• $6.6 million: Support for the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, founded in 2008 to accelerate research and improve health on the state’s most pressing health challenges. Lead administrator: Dr. Anantha Shekhar
• $6.5 million: Funding to develop the next generation of late-onset Alzheimer’s disease models based on human data. Lead researcher: Dr. Brian Lamb.
• $5.77 million: Drug discovery for Alzheimer’s disease. Lead researcher: Dr. Alan Palkowitz.
• $3.73 million: Collecting and analyzing data about treatment of HIVand evaluating outcomes of people living with HIV/AIDS. Lead researcher: Dr. Kara Kay Wools-Kaloustian.
• $2.87 million: Support for the Indiana Alzheimer’s Disease Center, one of 32 Alzheimer’s disease research centers nationally that are hubs for clinical trials and patient-support programs. Lead researcher: Dr. Andrew Saykin.
• $2.79 million: A project to recruit minority and underserved patients and test effects of genotype-guided opioid therapy on pain control and opioid-related adverse events. Lead researcher: Dr. Todd Skaar.
• $2.76 million: Support basic and translational research being done at the IU Simon Cancer Center. Lead researcher: Dr. Pat Loehrer.
• $2.38 million: Research to understand the role that certain proteins play during heart development in an effort to minimize congenital heart defects, the most common birth defect. Lead researcher: Dr. Anthony Firulli.