By Eugene Vilensky
U of L receives second highest grant in its history
The University of Louisville Birth Defects Center has received the second-largest federal grant in the university’s history. The $8.2 million will fund the work of five junior scientists who are trying to understand the causes of birth defects during fetal development.
The Center for Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) grant is part of a program intended to help the work of junior scientists in states that have historically low success rates in obtaining National Institutes of Health funding. It follows an $8.5 million COBRE grant to the Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center at U of L in 2000.
The grant will provide a senior faculty member to serve as mentor for each of the researchers, and will also pay for the equipment, personnel, and supplies needed to conduct cutting-edge research.
The success of the COBRE grant will be measured in the ability of the junior scientists to compete for their own NIH grants, said Robert Greene, director of the U of L Birth Defects Center.
The grant has been viewed by U of L officials as payoff from Kentucky’s “Bucks for Brains,” a program established under Governor Paul Patton to provide dollar-for-dollar matching state funds to private contributions in order to recruit top faculty and boost research in Kentucky.
“Bucks for Brains” has helped increase federal funding for U of L researchers from $7.6 million in 1997 to $27 million in 2001.
Congresswoman Anne Northup helped obtain $1.2 million in “seed money” for the Birth Defects Center in a spending bill. Northup, who sits on the House subcommittee that oversees medical research funding, said, “I believe these dollars belong where they serve the American people the most: where the cutting edge research is. Getting a grant from NIH is recognition that this is a top research institution.”
The Birth Defects Center was established in 2000 as part of the School of Dentistry. Its core researchers focus on birth defects that affect the head and neck, such as cleft lip and cleft palate, which are among the most common in the United States.
In 2000, 3,222 Kentucky children were born with birth defects. Birth defects were the leading cause of infant deaths, involving one in five deaths during the first year of life.
