Collaborations among OCRID Members Enhance Research Funding Opportunities
11/15/2016
One of the missions of OCRID is to promote collaborations among center investigators and thus enhance the ability for OCRID investigators to compete for research funding. The following three recent examples reflect the effectiveness of such efforts.
Dr. Susan Kovats and Dr. Heather Fahlenkamp received $157,242 from the Oklahoma Center
for Adult Stem Cell Research to investigate the differentiation of human hematopoietic
stem cells to lung resident immune stem cells using a tissue-engineering lung model.
Dr. Kovats is an OCRID center investigator and Associate Member in Arthritis & Clinical
Immunology Research Program at OMRF with research interests in immunology of influenza
virus infection. Dr. Fahlenkamp is a Project Leader in OCRID and an R.N. Maddox Associate
Professor in Chemical Engineering at OSU with research interests in tissue engineering.
Dr. Ashish Ranjan and Dr. Myron Hinsdale received an equipment grant totaling $179,500
to purchase an in vivo imaging system also from the Oklahoma Center for Adult Stem
Cell Research. Dr. Ranjan is a Pilot Project Leader in OCRID and Associate Professor
& Kerr Endowed Chair in Physiological Sciences, OSU and Dr. Hinsdale is Director of
Animal Models Core of OCRID and Associate Professor in Physiological Sciences, OSU.
Also included on the grant are seven other participants; four of which are OCRID investigators
(Drs. Lin Liu, Pamela Lloyd, Josh Ramsey, and Lijun Xia). This imaging system will
be housed in the Animal Models Core and has capacity of longitudinal monitoring of
disease processes in six imaging modalities: fluorescence, luminescence, Cherenkov,
direct radioisotopic, reflectance, and radiographic (X-ray).
Finally, an NIH U19 center grant application with a requested amount of approximately $7.5 million was recently submitted. Drs. Heather Fahlenkamp, Susan Kovats, Lin Liu and Jordan Metcalf serve as project leads. Dr. Metcalf is a co-Director of OCRID and Professor in Pulmonary and Critical Care Section at OUHSC. Dr. Bob Welliver, a mentor in OCRID and Section Chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at OUHSC, is also involved in this center grant. This application proposes to develop human patient-specific, tissue-engineered normal and diseased lung models and to address key questions in respiratory infectious diseases using these models. The proposal brings together OCRID investigators with complementary expertise in tissue engineering, immunology, respiratory infectious diseases, stem cells, and translational research.