NIH Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

NIH Grant Boosts Vision Research At WVU

A large federal grant will help researchers at West Virginia University understand vision problems.

The National Institutes of Health has awarded West Virginia University an $11 million Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) grant for a visual sciences research center.

The funding will help WVU recruit researchers and clinician-scientists who will work together to develop innovative ways to prevent, treat and slow the progression of vision problems and blinding eye disease that are currently incurable.

West Virginia has one of the highest rates of visual disability in the U.S. The CDC estimates four percent of West Virginians live with blindness or severe difficulty seeing even with glasses.

In a press release from WVU, the principal COBRE investigator Visvanathan Ramamurthy said the center’s research could have implications across—and beyond—West Virginia.

Successful WVU STEM Mentoring Program Heads to Alabama

The West Virginian Health Sciences and Technology Academy, known as HSTA, is a mentoring program housed at West Virginia University. It helps participating students succeed in science, technology, engineering and math-based undergraduate and graduate degree programs.

Now, that program is going on the road. The University of Alabama Capstone College of Nursing in Tuscaloosa, Alabama has received a $1.2 million Science Education Partnership Award from the National Institutes of Health to set up a HSTA program there over the next five years.

This is the first full-scale Health Sciences and Technology Academy outside of West Virginia.

The Alabama program will serve primarily rural, low-income African American high-schoolers.

Of the 3,000 young people who have graduated from West Virginia’s HSTA program, 99 percent have gone on to college, 89 percent have obtained a college degree, 84 percent continue to live and work in West Virginia, and they earn, on average, $30,000 more per year than their highest-earning parent.

Robin Bartlett, associate dean for research at the University of Alabama Capstone College of Nursing, will lead the team in establishing the nursing-focused pilot program in Alabama’s Hale and Pickens counties.

In speaking to the importance of HSTA-AL, Bartlett said, “Our state is in dire need of more nurses, particularly nurse scientists, nurse faculty, and registered nurses from rural areas and diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. To change this dynamic, we must encourage students from underrepresented populations to enter the field of nursing before they graduate from high school. We will build on WV HSTA’s successes, opening Alabama high school students up to the possibilities of a biomedical career, especially a career in nursing.”

NIH Begins Clinical Trial on Drug to Treat Opioid Cravings

The National Institutes of Health has begun a clinical trial on a drug designed to treat cravings associated with opioid use disorder.

There are a handful of drugs already on the market that are commonly used to treat OUD such as methadone, buprenorphine and naltrexone. But these are either synthetic opioids or have little impact on cravings specifically. The new drug, if successful, will focus on targeting the cravings felt by some patients who have OUD – and hopefully help them maintain sobriety.

Researchers will examine how the new drug is processed by the body when used together with another drug that is processed by the same pathways. The idea is to see how the new drug would respond if a physician were to use it in conjunction with other medications like naltrexone, or if a physician were treating cravings for opioid use disorder while also treating the patient for a related disease like HIV.

The study will enroll 50 healthy adults aged 18 through 65 years. Participants will stay in the Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, for 10 days and return for a final outpatient visit after one week.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from Marshall Health and Charleston Area Medical Center.

NIH Funding Also Boosts Local Economy, Provides Jobs, Brief Argues

In its proposed budget released this week, the Trump administration called for big cuts to national medical and science funding institutions. In response, a medical research advocacy organization has published a brief on the impact of National Institutes of Health funding.

Most National Institutes of Health or NIH funding goes to major research institutes such as Johns Hopkins, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania. But smaller institutions such as West Virginia University and Marshall also receive funding for research into health issues such if fracking has impacts on cardiovascular health.

The new report, published by the NIH advocacy organization United for Medical Research, argues that in addition to supporting vital medical research, NIH grants have broad economic impact on the labor force and local economy. In West Virginia, for instance, they report that in 2017 the state received more than $28 million in funding, which generated $6 million in taxes for local governments and supported around 400 jobs.

The Trump administration proposed cutting the NIH 12 percent and the National Science Foundation 13 percent. Medical and science research institutes around the country have pushed back against the proposal.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from Marshall Health and Charleston Area Medical Center.