2012 Edition: Research and the AP Top 25
For the college football fans among us, today is like a second Christmas: The season begins tonight. South Carolina’s visit to upstart Vanderbilt is the most notable game on the schedule, as South Carolina is the only ranked team in action tonight.
And so, for the third straight year, we’re happy to present our own little mashup of college football and medical research.
It would be pretty easy to get on a roll about who’s overrated and underrated and what players to watch out for — a temptation we’ve had to force ourselves to stay away from for the past two years. We know our audience: researchers and those who care about research. So, just as we’ve done in the links above, we present some of the interesting research going on at schools ranked in the Associated Press Top 25.
We acknowledge, of course, that some of these schools may have greater emphasis in areas other than traditional medical research. But where possible, we’ll highlight recent research from that school that improves health. Schools in italics are Research!America members or have one subunit that is a Research!America member.
1. University of Southern California
USC student Sarmad Al-Bassam, PhD, served as the lead author on a paper that explained what was seen using a new method to see how proteins and transmitted to and from neurons in the brain. Previously, it was difficult to isolate one pathway because there were so many other pathways — many of which overlapped. By itself, the pathway that Al-Bassam and his colleagues captured on video shows a steady stream of incoming and outgoing proteins, not unlike a sped-up video of trucks entering and leaving a warehouse. “Your brain is being disassembled and reassembled every day,” said Don Arnold, PhD, associate professor of molecular and computational biology at USC and a co-author of the paper, according to the school’s press release. “One week from today, your brain will be made up of completely different proteins than it is today. This video shows the process. We’ve known that it was happening, but now we can watch it happen.”
2. University of Alabama
The University of Alabama has made gains against chronic pain in traditional and unexpected ways. William “Skip” Pridgen, MD, a surgeon in Tuscaloosa, AL — where the school is located — has teamed with UA professor Carol Duffy, PhD, to form a startup called Innovative Med Concepts. The company has raised sufficient funding to hold a Phase II clinical trial to test a combination of drugs to treat fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition. Meanwhile, Beverly Thorn, PhD, chair of the psychology department at UA, is developing therapies around the “gate control theory of pain,” which states that pain is a multidimensional experience, not just a sensory one.
3. Louisiana State University
Given that LSU is only today starting to reopen after waiting out Hurricane Isaac, it makes sense that the effects of hurricanes would be a key facet of the school’s research. Barry Keim, PhD, a professor in the Geography and Anthropology Department, and “Hurricane” Hal Needham, a grad student, put together “the world’s most comprehensive storm surge map.” After all, it’s storm surge — not wind or rain — that is traditionally the most deadly aspect of hurricanes. “When we started this research in 2008, this approach was completely unique,” Needham said in a story on the school’s website. “Modeling is very useful, but you need to validate it with what’s happened historically. That is what we are trying to do here … SURGEDAT is a snapshot of where the most vulnerability from storm surge is located worldwide.”
4. University of Oklahoma
Paul Branscum, PhD, surveyed fourth- and fifth-grade students from throughout the Midwest to get a sense of their diets over the course of a 24-hour period. The results: Students had the most control when choosing snacks, but unfortunately the highest calorie snacks were also the least expensive. The group averaged 300 calories from high-calorie snacks (17% of their daily caloric intake needs) but just 45 calories from fruits and vegetables — roughly equivalent to half a piece of fruit. The information is important, since snacking has been linked to childhood obesity.
5. University of Oregon
How’s this for applied research? Elliot Berkman, PhD, from UO’s Department of Psychology, got volunteers to undergo an MRI while viewing motivational messages to help quit tobacco habits. Based on what Berkman learns, the more effective messages will be deployed when the campus goes entirely tobacco-free this fall. “Some of the messages that ultimately go out in the fall will be part of a neurally informed prevention effort,” Berkman said, according to a story on the school’s website.
6. University of Georgia
Collaboration between Yiping Zhou, PhD, a physics professor, and Ralph Tripp, PhD, of the College of Veterinary Medicine, has led to new nanomaterials that could increase the efficiency and lower the cost of common DNA tests. The two focused on microRNA — short strands of RNA. “MicroRNA-based therapies are under way for many diseases, but progress is confounded by the inherent difficulties in detecting small RNAs with standard techniques,” Tripp said according to a story on the school’s website. The hope is that the new method could help clinicians improve diagnosis of certain cancers and also detect the presence of viruses in tissue.
7. Florida State University
A medical device for premature babies would hardly seem to be the province for a music professor. But Jayne Standley, PhD, has come up with an ingenious idea: the Pacifier Activated Lullaby, or PAL. Whenever a baby sucks on a PAL, a lullaby begins to play; that encourages the baby to suck more and for longer. That leads to more effective feeding and earlier trips home from the hospital. According to the video on the link above, PAL is now available to hospitals throughout the country.
8. University of Michigan
We admit it: We couldn’t help but read an article on UM’s website when we saw the term “insect cyborgs.” And it doesn’t disappoint — not even for those looking for a health angle! Researchers at the College of Engineering came up with a cyborg beetle that could serve as a first responder of sorts in exceptionally dangerous or inaccessible areas. But even with miniaturization, much energy would be needed to power a flying insect cyborg and also operate other instruments onboard. But the researchers found a solution. “Through energy scavenging, we could potentially power cameras, microphones and other sensors and communications equipment that an insect could carry aboard a tiny backpack,” said Khalil Najafi, PhD, chair of electrical and computer engineering. “We could then send these ‘bugged’ bugs into dangerous or enclosed environments where we would not want humans to go.” Flapping of the wings, for instance, could generate additional energy.
9. University of South Carolina
X-rays are not new technology by any means, but researchers at South Carolina are exploring whether there are applications in areas few people have looked before. Typical X-rays at the doctor’s office are “hard” X-rays, meaning they have high energy. Professor Krishna Mandal, PhD, is looking at whether “soft” X-rays — those with lower energy — could be more a more effective way to develop imaging. “There’s nothing available on the market that covers this range of X-rays,” Mandal told the school’s website. “Nobody has explored this region, and there will be many innovations that will result from our being able to do so, particularly when it comes to medical imaging.”
10. University of Arkansas
Doctoral student Ellen Brune’s research may lead to a significant shortening of the time from bench to bedside. Her research led to an improved way to develop proteins for pharmaceutical uses. By developing custom strains of bacteria that express minimal amounts of “nuisance” proteins, Brune’s work could help pharmaceutical companies stop “spend[ing] too much time and money getting rid of stuff that doesn’t work to get to the stuff that does,” Brune said, according to the school’s website. “Our work addresses this problem. Our cell lines reduce the garbage, so to speak, before the manufacturing process begins.” She’s already founded a company, Boston Mountain Biotech, for the technology.
11. West Virginia University
An intensive, two-county study identified challenges and opportunities in obesity intervention. The three-pronged study looked at availability of healthy foods, built a map to explore the environment as it relates to physical activity, and talked to community members to get their takes on the obesity epidemic. “Prior to this, the environmental factors were not adequately studied and understood,” Elaine Bowen, a health promotion specialist with WVU Extension, told the school’s website. “It was essential that our study interventions are informed and guided by facts instead of researcher assumptions and opinions.”
12. University of Wisconsin
The university’s Institute on Aging is conducting a national longitudinal study by tracing how we age from early adulthood through later life. The study is called MIDUS, or Midlife in the United States. Of particular interest to the study is resilience in the face of adversity; the study has examined people who buck trends identified by previous studies, such as older individuals who show no signs of cognitive impairment. “This maintenance seems to be facilitated by staying mentally engaged as well as by having good social relationships,” Carol Ryff, PhD, director of the Institute of Aging, told the school’s website.
13. Michigan State University
Our bodies are marvels in any number of ways, but they are far from being perfectly efficient. In that regard, MSU researchers came up with some new ideas in an age-old debate: Why do some organisms build tissue that goes unused? Jeff Clune, PhD, likened it to building a roller coaster and then immediately tearing it down to build a skyscraper. By using new technology called computational evolution, Clune — the lead author who is now at Cornell University — and his team were able to study things impossible to be seen in nature. So what did they find? Clune continues the metaphor. “An engineer would simply skip the roller coaster step, but evolution is more of a tinkerer and less of an engineer,” he said. “It uses whatever parts that are lying around, even if the process that generates those parts is inefficient.”
14. Clemson University
For the avowed aviation geeks, researchers and students at Clemson helped a company modify a mobile drill press so that it could more efficiently drill holes into a runway. Why would you do such a thing? To create an overrun area to aid in arresting aircraft and prevent passenger injuries. According to a story on Clemson’s research blog, students reduced the enormous weight of the machine by working on the undercarriage and wheels, as well as some of the internal components.
15. University of Texas
You may remember Research!America’s event in Houston that looked at neglected tropical diseases in Texas. Flu is hardly neglected, but a pandemic is always a major concern. Lauren Meyers, PhD, an associate professor in the Section of Integrative Biology, came up with a model that simulates how a flu pandemic would spread through the state. “While the forecasts will not be exact, they give a rough idea of how many people will be hospitalized around the state and when an epidemic may peak. Such information can lead to more timely and effective control measures,” Meyers said, according to the school’s website. Officials in the state have already put Meyers’ modeling to use.
16. Virginia Tech
Macrophage cells are “the security guards of the body,” so understanding how they defend the good and root out the bad is critically important — especially when things go awry. Liwu Li, PhD; John Tyson, PhD; and Jianhua Xing, PhD, all collaborated to develop a computational model that shows how macrophage cells respond. Studies like this could lay the groundwork for future study that identifies molecules involved in how the macrophage immune response is altered or reprogrammed.
17. University of Nebraska
Fully in the spirit of this post, Nebraska recently convened faculty and members of the school’s athletics department for a discussion on collaborating research. The most obvious area of overlap is with concussions, and indeed that was part of the retreat: A portion of Memorial Stadium, Nebraska’s football field, will be dedicated to the proposed Center for Brain, Biology and Behavior. That addition, however, will also house the Nebraska Athletic Performance Lab, which will examine technology, nutrition, psychology and learning as areas critical to better performance and health, according to the school’s website.
18. Ohio State University
Now there’s empirical evidence why you shouldn’t text and drive: A study, led by researchers from Ohio State, found that multitasking with two different visual activities reduced performance in both tasks — significantly more than trying to do a visual task and an audio task at the same time. The caveat, of course, is that driving and talking on the phone isn’t a completely safe behavior either. “They’re both dangerous, but as both our behavioral performance data and eye-tracking data suggest, texting is more dangerous to do while driving than talking on a phone, which is not a surprise,” Zheng Wang, PhD, an assistant professor in the School of Communication and lead author in the study, told the school’s website.
19. Oklahoma State University
Oklahoma State has been selected to design and test unmanned aircraft for the Department of Homeland Security. While the military uses of unmanned aircraft are well known, there are applications domestically as well. “You have a tornado run through an area, you need to find victims very, very quickly,” Jamey Jacob, PhD, a professor of aerospace engineering, told KFOR-TV. “How can you utilize that technology to really help first responders?”
20. Texas Christian University
As you probably know, Research!America is located in Alexandria, VA. We have some farms some miles away, but one thing we don’t have is ranches. Ranches are the province of the Midwest and West, where vast, open plains stretch as far as one can see. TCU has its own Ranch Management program. And that’s pretty darn cool.
21. Stanford University
How appropriate for Silicon Valley: Researchers at Stanford and Intel infused disease-associated proteins on a silicon chip in much the same way they would build a semiconductor. But because of the nature of these proteins, which constantly interact with each other, understanding the whys of those interactions was challenging. By putting them onto a silicon wafer, to analyze thousands of simultaneous interactions. The hope is that it could lead to patient-specific diagnoses and, eventually, more effective therapies.
22. Kansas State University
Thanks to pigs, researchers at K-State could be on the verge of a major breakthrough in the fight against cancer. Pigs with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) are being used to test cancer and cancer therapies. Though tests with SCID mice have been performed, the results have not always translated to humans. But the researchers — Bob Rowland, PhD, and Deryl Troyer, DVM, PhD — believe there may be better luck in studying the pigs.
23. University of Florida
We mentioned insect cyborgs earlier, and faculty at Florida are researching a topic that’s nearly as interesting: nanorobots. These nanorobots could be targeted to particular disease, shutting down the production of disease-related proteins. An earlier test with hepatitis C was successful. “This is a novel technology that may have broad application because it can target essentially any gene we want. This opens the door to new fields so we can test many other things. We’re excited about it,” said Chen Liu, MD, PhD, according to a school press release. Liu, along with Y. Charles Cao, PhD, conducted the research.
24. Boise State University
Boise State recently opened The Kitchen, a building designed to facilitate cross-disciplinary thinking and problem-solving. Entrepreneurs and inventors from the community come by to discuss ideas with faculty. “It’s a place to convene and have the discussions about the unique and optimal commercialization path for various innovations,” Mary Givens Andrews, director for the Office of University and Industry Ventures, said in a story on the school’s website. “We’re advancing ideas, concepts and patents, developing them and moving them along the path, and to do that you need different perspectives along the way, especially industry’s input.”
25. University of Louisville
Researchers at Louisville have devised guidelines to help nurses identify and aid new mothers who are at risk of postpartum depression. The guidelines were put into place at the University of Louisville Hospital. “The hospital policies and procedures are designed to provide perinatal nurses the tools they need to prepare new mothers so they are able to self-monitor for symptoms of depression and know what steps to take if they experience symptoms,” M. Cynthia Logsdon, PhD, who spearheaded the creation of the guidelines said in a school press release.
Research!America Press Release: Likely Voters Say President’s “First 100 Days in Office” Should Include Plans for Promoting Medical Progress
As Political Conventions Begin, Voters say it’s Important for Candidates to Address Medical Research
WASHINGTON—August 22, 2012— On the eve of the political conventions, nearly two-thirds of likely voters say the next president should announce initiatives promoting medical progress during his “first 100 days in office,” according to a new national public opinion poll commissioned by Research!America. And nearly three-quarters of those polled say it’s important for candidates for the presidency and Congress to have a science advisor. The findings reveal deep concerns among voters about the lack of attention candidates and elected officials have assigned to research.
“Research and innovation, despite its contributions to the nation’s health and the economy, has been given short-shrift by candidates this year – even as funding for research is at high risk in budget discussions,” said Mary Woolley, president and CEO of Research!America. “This is troubling given the fact that deep spending cuts for government supported research and failure to adopt policies promoting competitiveness could drastically slow the pace of discovery and development at a time when health threats are expanding in many communities.”
Nearly 60 percent of likely voters say elected officials in Washington are not paying enough attention to combating the many deadly diseases that afflict Americans. An overwhelming majority of voters (90%) say it is important for candidates to address medical and health research this year. With concern about health care costs rising, 77% of likely voters say the federal government should fund research to make the health care system more efficient and effective. And despite the tough economy, more than half (53%) are willing to pay $1 per week more in taxes if they were certain that all of the money would be spent for additional research.
“Americans get the importance of medical research. Without a strong investment in research, we can’t combat disease, we can’t reduce exploding health care costs and we can’t balance our budget,” added Woolley.
Poll highlights include:
- 68% believe the federal government should increase support for scientific research that advances the frontiers of knowledge and supports private sector innovation.
- 60% say medical progress will slip in the U.S. if another country takes the lead in science, technology and medical innovation.
- 66% say their quality of life has been improved by medical research over last decade.
- 61% favor expanding federal funding for research using embryonic stem cells.
- Only 15% know that medical research in the U.S. is conducted in every state.
To view the poll, visit: www.researchamerica.org/nationalpoll2012
Research!America’s national voter education initiative Your Candidates-Your Health, invites candidates for the presidency and Congress to state their views on medical research and related issues. The brief questionnaire can be found at www.yourcandidatesyourhealth.org.
The National Public Opinion Pollwas conducted online in August 2012 by JZ Analytics for Research!America. The poll has a sample size of 1,052 likely U.S. voters with a theoretical sampling error of +/- 3.1%.
About us: Research!America is the nation’s largest nonprofit public education and advocacy alliance working to make research to improve health a higher national priority. Founded in 1989, Research!America is supported by member organizations that represent the voices of 125 million Americans. Visit www.researchamerica.org.
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From Hope to Cure
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) has launched a new initiative which focuses on the myriad benefits of health and medical research, particularly as it relates to patient care. The initiative, titled From Hope to Cures, uses patient videos as well as statistical evidence and graphics to illustrate how the billions of dollars spent by pharmaceutical companies on research are extending and enriching the lives of millions of people.
This new initiative represents a push for research, progress, and hope. There are numerous items on the initiative’s website including links to articles ranging from drug discovery and development to a study which predicts substantial growth in the healthcare job industry by 2020.
Although these articles provide useful information about health and medical research as a worthwhile investment, the truly remarkable content lies in the patient videos. Susan Parkinson, a survivor of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, recounts her tale of doctors immediately identifying the disease after a CAT scan and getting her into chemotherapy treatment within a week. She credits the chemotherapy and radiation treatments with saving her life and ensuring that she would be around to raise her children. She also noted that 20years ago, these treatments were not available. Thanks to the dedicated work of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, Susan will be able to watch her children grow into adulthood. The video ends with this important message — “981 new medicines and vaccines are currently in development to fight cancer.”
This type of inspirational story becomes even more poignant when considering the potential impact of the automatic spending cuts for federal agencies scheduled to take effect in January 2013. The loss of funding for medical and health research will greatly affect everyone — scientists, doctors, patients, and the families of those struggling with disease. As evidenced in Susan’s story, research is ultimately the difference between life and death.
PhRMA, a member of the Research!America alliance, represents the country’s leading pharmaceutical industry research and biotechnology companies.
Star Tribune Editorial is on the Mark: ‘A Slackened Commitment to Research Could Not Have Worse Timing’
The Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a recent editorial supportive of medical research; though it appeared last week, it’s still worth sharing.
The editorial, “Worst possible time to cut research,” ran July 30.
Medical research is an important topic for Minnesota. In FY11, the state ranked 17th in awards and 12th in funding from the National Institutes of Health, thanks mostly to two organizations.
The University of Minnesota, in downtown Minneapolis, earned 583 NIH awards and more than $264 million in funding. Eighty-five miles to the south, in Rochester, the Mayo Clinic (a Research!America member) earned 370 awards and more than $200 million in funding. The state is also home to a thriving medical device industry (including Medtronic, the world’s largest medical technology company) and UnitedHealth Group.
Research and health matters to Minnesotans, and that’s reflected in the editorial.
“In the agricultural Midwest, there’s a term for what policy makers are mulling for medical research,” the editorial board writes. “It’s called ‘eating your seed corn’ — a move that brings short-term gain while jeopardizing the future. And while it’s never good policy, a slackened commitment to research could not have worse timing.
“China, Singapore, Great Britain and others are bolstering their financial commitment to life-science research, hoping to wrest away high-tech industries and high-paying jobs. The United States must maintain its lead amid fierce new competition. It also needs the half-million good-paying jobs linked to NIH funding.
“Those funding recommendations represent more than a dollar figure. They reflect a nation’s priorities. Difficult spending decisions must be made, but thoughtless cuts could wind up ‘relegating us to a different place,’ said University of Minnesota Medical School Dean Dr. Aaron Friedman. ‘Is that what we want to have happen?'”
