NIH awards $15M grant to UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School

For the second time in less than one month, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-New Jersey Medical School has been awarded a coveted $15 million grant by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

"The impact of these grants has the potential to extend beyond the laboratories of New Jersey Medical School by reaching into local, national as well as international communities which stand to benefit from lifesaving research aimed at combating dreaded diseases like AIDS and other medical afflictions," said Dr. Robert L. Johnson, interim dean of the UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School (NJMS).

The most recent award, a highly competitive $15 million construction - or CO6 - grant, comes from NIH's National Center for Research Resources to address critical improvements to NJMS' research facilities. The funding is part of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 which provides an unprecedented $8.2 billion in federal stimulus funding to support and advance scientific research. The CO6 grant was coordinated through NJMS' Research Office under the direction of Dr. William C. Gause, senior associate dean for research at NJMS.

Also this month, Dr. Abraham Pinter, of the Public Health Research Institute at NJMS, was awarded a five-year consortium grant of $15.9 million by the NIH for HIV vaccine development.

Dr. Pinter is among an elite group of researchers worldwide who are seeking to develop a vaccine that could prevent HIV infection. His research focuses on identifying the mechanisms by which HIV eludes the immune response, identifying new sites that are effective neutralization targets and learning how to efficiently elicit antibodies against such targets by vaccination.

Members of Dr. Pinter's lab in the PHRI who are participating in the study include Dr. Chavdar Krachmarov and Dr. Aymeric DeParseval. Dr. Pinter will also be joined on this project by researchers at the Wits Health Consortium in South Africa, the University of Washington in Seattle, Tulane University in New Orleans, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Current active NIH awards at NJMS total $76 million, $30 million of which come from stimulus funding. The funds support 175 research programs, covering a wide variety of NJMS' areas of excellence including cancer; neuroscience; immunity; infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis and HIV; aging; and cardiovascular disease, among others.