The National Institutes of Health awarded a record $27.7 million in research grants and contracts to the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation in 2004. This total tops OMRF’s previous best of $25.6 million, set last year.“The NIH is the leading supporter of biomedical research in the world, and an NIH grant is the ultimate seal of approval,” said OMRF President J. Donald Capra, M.D. “These numbers once again prove what many of us already know: Oklahoma is home to some of the world’s most innovative scientists.”
Each NIH grant application is thoroughly vetted by panels of experts. Nationwide, the NIH funded only 30 percent of grant applications that scientists submitted in 2003 (the most recent year for which statistics are available). “The NIH funding process is incredibly competitive,” said Capra. “The quality of scientists’ proposals are rigorously judged by their peers, and only the most compelling research ideas receive funding.”
For six years running, OMRF has set new benchmarks in NIH funding. Since 1998, when it secured $7.8 million in NIH grants and contracts, the foundation’s NIH funding has grown at an average annual rate of more than 23 percent, outpacing every major medical research institution in the country save one. OMRF’s NIH funding now ranks it among the top 20 independent medical research institutes in the U.S.
In 2004, OMRF’s 45 principal researchers secured an average of $615,000 in NIH funding per scientist. “These great minds are as valuable to Oklahoma as oil reserves,” Capra said. “If our state wants to become the research capital of the Plains, it’s simply a matter of attracting more scientists like these.”
The individual grants, 49 in total, ranged from $77,000 to $2.7 million. The research topics were equally diverse, from studying the causes of blood clotting to developing more effective ways to fight the bacteria that causes anthrax. OMRF also received a $1.3 million contract to operate a registry and repository that tracks data and stores biological samples from families in which more than one member suffers from the autoimmune disease lupus.
“National Institutes of Health grants and contracts give our scientists the tools to achieve OMRF’s mission — helping people to live longer, healthier lives,” said Capra.
In addition to the $27.7 million in NIH funds, OMRF obtained almost $9 million in competitive research funding from other sources in 2004, which pushed the foundation’s total annual grant funding to more than $36 million, another new benchmark. These additional grants came from three sources: nonprofits such as the American Heart Association; pharmaceutical companies; and federal and state agencies like the National Science Foundation and the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology.
“If you look at these numbers, they speak volumes about the economic impact medical research is having in Oklahoma,” said Capra. “The average OMRF scientist is bringing three-quarters of a million out-of-state dollars into this state’s economy. Not only are those dollars creating jobs and business for Oklahomans, but they’re helping to find treatments and cures for diseases that touch all of us.”
About OMRF:
Chartered in 1946, OMRF (www.omrf.org) is a nonprofit biomedical research institute dedicated to understanding and curing human disease. Its scientists focus on such critical research areas as Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, lupus and cardiovascular disease. OMRF is home to Oklahoma’s only member of the National Academy of Sciences.
