GRANT-ed!
Congratulations to these TTUHSC faculty members who received extramural funding from June through December 2018.
Breast Cancer Research
Sanjay Awasthi, MD, received a three-year $1.1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense for his research, “Prevention of Breast Cancer of Haploinsufficiency of RALBP1.” He shows for the first time that blocking the stress-responsive protein called Rlip (or RALBP1) defeats the deleterious effects of p53 loss more effectively.
Over half of all breast cancers carry genetic defects in the p53 gene, a powerful tumor suppressor, according to an article by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
“This discovery is a game changer in cancer treatment because more than half of all types of cancers lack the normal p53,” Awasthi said.
Alcohol Use Disorder
Susan Bergeson, PhD, and Ted Reid, PhD, received a one-year $60,000 award for their research, “Development of Tetracycline Analogs for Alcohol Use Disorder Treatment,” and a five-year $1.6 million grant for another study, “Chemically modified minocycline for treatment of alcohol use disorder,” both from the National Institutes of Health National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
According to the $1.6 million grant's abstract, “Only three pharmacotherapeutic treatments for Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) are FDA approved and none are widely used or show a strong effect to reduce risky- or dependence-based drinking in the long term.”
With the Phase I $60,000 grant, the duo proposes preclinical studies to determine the potential to treat AUD for the seven chemically-modified tetracycline analogs (CMTs). They hypothesize that their newly designed CMTs without antimicrobial properties will be effective in the reduction of binge and dependence drinking, consistent with translation for use in human treatment of mild to severe AUD. (Read more here.)
Kidney Disease
Ion Bobulescu, MD, received a three-year $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for his work, “Role of gut bacteria and renal lipids in obesity-related kidney disease.”
The association between obesity and chronic kidney disease persists, even after statistical adjustment for diabetes and high blood pressure, which are known risk factors often present in people with obesity. These findings suggest that obesity itself contributes to kidney disease, which isn’t completely understood.
According to the abstract: “This project tests a highly innovative model integrating existing knowledge with new findings in multiple areas of human pathophysiology and microbial biology.” (Read more here.)