La Jolla, Calif. October 10, 2006 The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded $12.7 million to the Burnham Institute for Medical Research for a collaborative research program including Salk Institute for Biological Studies (Salk), The Scripps Research Institute (Scripps) and University of California, San Diego (UCSD) that will create one of the nation's top research facilities in the neurosciences.
The five-year grant will support core technology facilities for researchers studying the nervous system. The program, funded by the NIH's Blueprint for Neuroscience Research, will bring together nearly 100 scientists from the four San Diego institutions to study how the nervous system works and possibly develop treatments for nervous system diseases.
Currently, diseases of the nervous system account for six of the top 10 causes of disability in the United States, according to the World Health Organization. About one in three Americans will be affected by a nervous system disease at some point in his or her life.
"I am proud of every scientist who participated in this grant," said Stuart Lipton, M.D., Ph.D., Burnham professor and director of the Institute's Del E. Webb Center for Neuroscience and Aging Research. "This honor as one of the nation's top NIH-designated neuroscience centers should further our efforts to understand how the nervous system functions and design therapies for a wide range of nervous system disorders."
Specifically, the grant will support neuroscience in 13 core areas, including: stem cells, proteomics, crystallography and nuclear magnetic imaging work, structural biology, functional genomics, genetic analysis, neurobehavior in mice, diseases of nerve cells, electrophysiology studies of nerve impulse transmission, drug screening, and biostatistics and computational modeling.
"Dr. Stuart Lipton has been a leader in catalyzing joint medical research among the neuroscientists at all four institutions in
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Contact: Nancy Beddingfield
nbeddingfield@burnham.org
858-646-3146
Burnham Institute
10-Oct-2006