The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has recently made a grant of $1 million to the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation for renovation of the Foundation’s main building, built in 1949. This grant is one of only 17 such grants awarded a biomedical research institution for construction purposes this year.
The grant, noted OMRF president J. Donald Capra, M.D., is given on a competitive basis, as are all NIH grants. “About 12 years ago the NIH decided against using construction grants as a mechanism of support for biomedical research,” Capra said. “Thus, for the last decade, all OMRF construction has been supported by wills, large gifts, or endowment funds. The Chapman Trust, along with the Noble Foundation, has been instrumental in much of our recent construction, as has the Rapp Foundation.”
The NIH grant is for renovation rather than new construction. The complete project will cost closer to $4 million, as the NIH grant requires a match of three-to-one.
“These monies will be used to help in the renovation of the third and fourth floors of OMRF’s Main Building’s east wing, including the Arthritis and Immunology and the Immunobiology and Cancer research programs,” said Capra.
The private, non-profit biomedical research institute has experienced a significant spate of growth and public exposure since Capra became president in the summer of 1997. A fourth floor in the Main Building has been constructed, and construction has begun on a new pavilion in that building as well as an updated exterior 13th street exposure. Laboratory space in the Milligan Center has also been added.
“We need additional space to accommodate what we hope to be a 50 percent increase in OMRF’s scientific staff over the next decade,” Capra said.
OMRF is considered one of the top research institutes in the U.S. Its 40 scientists focus on cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis, lupus and other autoimmune diseases, AIDS, children’s diseases and genetics. Apart from the competitive, peer reviewed grants scientists receive from such national funding sources as the NIH, the National Science Foundation and non-profit agencies such as the American Heart Association, state competitive funding from the Oklahoma Center for Science and Technology (OCAST), the Foundation depends upon the donations of private individuals, corporations and foundations in Oklahoma and across the country.
