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Research
related to digestive health and disease is a well-recognized and important
strength at UTMB. The Gastrointestinal Research Interdisciplinary
Program (GRIP) aims to link existing strengths into a combined, focused
research program. The university has a long history of excellence
in gastrointestinal (GI) research, as evidenced by faculty members who
hold offices in national GI associations, serve on editorial boards of
prestigious GI journals, and are members of National Institutes of
Health study sections. In addition, the chairs of several UTMB
departments are GI or GI-related researchers. UTMB consistently
ranks in the top 10 of all national and international institutions in
the number of presentations at the annual Digestive Disease Week (the
largest yearly GI meeting in the world).
Diseases of the
gastrointestinal tract are frequent and serious, making this an
important and relevant research focus. Our strengths in basic GI
research are broad and clearly related to frequent and important
clinical problems, such as liver disease, inflammatory and infectious
gastric and intestinal diseases, GI cancers--in particular, colon
cancer--and the enteric nervous system. Taken together, these
strengths are highly competitive at the regional and national levels.
As a result, UTMB
is uniquely positioned to capitalize on its existing strengths in GI
research in ways that will substantially benefit the clinical
enterprise. We expect resources supporting gastrointestinal
research to create a multiplier effect on campus, encouraging
significant increases in extramural funding for the study of GI diseases
and further developing our clinical work on GI diseases.
The GI
researchers at UTMB form an interdisciplinary group of investigators in
several schools, departments and centers. The schools most heavily
represented are the School of Medicine and the
Graduate School of
Biomedical Sciences. Departments include Internal Medicine,
Surgery, Pediatrics, Microbiology and Immunology, Physiology and
Biophysics, Human Biological Chemistry and Genetics, Pharmacology and
Toxicology, Anatomy and Neurosciences, Pathology, and Preventive
Medicine and Community Health. The collaborating Sealy Centers
include Aging, Cancer Cell Biology, Molecular Science and Structural
Biology.
A major strength
of GRIP is that it brings together investigators in various disciplines
and with different backgrounds to focus on GI-related research without
losing their individual research foci.
During the last
year, GRIP has made progress in faculty recruitment, development of
infrastructure and the implementation of a pilot research funding
program and a seminar program. Three new faculty members in the GI
field have been or are being recruited: one in the Department of
Internal Medicine, one in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
and one in the Department of Surgery. Also, GRIP is supporting two
new campus facilities that will be instrumental in the advancement of GI
research on campus: the Histopathology Core Facility and the Optical
Imaging Laboratory.
By leveraging
resources to build strategic links between the existing areas of
strength, UTMB has an opportunity to assemble a unique and premier
interdisciplinary GI research focus. The foundation is already
here; when further connections are made, essential additional faculty
recruited, and multidisciplinary approaches nurtured, UTMB will have to
opportunity to become a leading GI research institution in the United
States and the world.
Extramural
funding to individuals involved in GI research at UTMB exceeds $49
million in total costs and includes numerous RO1 grants, two program
project grants and two training grants from NIH, as well as funding from
the Texas Higher Education Fund for Biomedical Research, American heart
Association, Crohn's & Colitis Foundation, Howard Hughes Institute,
Welch Foundation and the EPA. Maintaining and increasing the
number of individual RO1s remains a priority. We will continue to
strengthen our contacts with relevant foundations, such as the Crohns
& Colitis Foundation and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and we will
attempt to work with other new foundations in the future.
GI research at
UTMB is also enhanced by two innovative cooperative programs between
UTMB and other institutions. The Southeastern Cooperative
Hepatitis C Research group links researchers from Johns Hopkins
University, the Southwest Research Foundation in San Antonio and UTMB in
a research cooperative in the important area of viral infection.
The Texas Gulf Coast Digestive and Disease Center is made up of GI research programs at UTMB, Baylor College of Medicine and the University
of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and supports GI basic and
clinical research in Southeast Texas.
The UTMB schools
of Allied Health Sciences and Nursing would be expected to contribute
importantly to the clinical aspects of health prevention, environmental
risks, nutrition and epidemiology of various GI diseases. The
Sealy Center for Cancer Cell Biology enhances institutional research and
clinical emphasis on colorectal cancer. Focus on this critical
issue will lead to additional basic research on epithelial cell biology
and cancer. There is great potential in a program involving
faculty from the departments of Microbiology and Immunology, Pathology,
and Physiology and Biophysics. The program is based on a
transgenic mouse model of hepatitis C-related hepatocellular carcinoma
to explore the link between a common viral infection and an epithelial
cell malignancy. These are just examples of possible areas for
further development. Strengths also exist and will be expanded in
the fields of infection and inflammation in the GI tract and in the role
of the enteric nervous system in health and disease.
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