The Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation has received a $6.4 million grant renewal from the National Institutes of Health to support an Institutional Development Award (IDeA) Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE). The grant will continue work to foster research in developmental biology.
The IDeA program builds research capacity in states where NIH research funding has historically been low by supporting basic, clinical and translational research, faculty development, and infrastructure improvements.
OMRF scientist Linda Thompson, Ph.D., has led the grant since 2013, when the NIH first awarded OMRF a COBRE to expand developmental biology in Oklahoma. The latest renewal signals the third and final five-year grant phase. OMRF received $12.6 million in 2013 for Phase 1 and $13.1 million in 2018 for Phase 2.
Developmental biology is the study of how organisms grow and develop. OMRF’s COBRE-supported scientists study a host of conditions, including how the intestine repairs itself after injury, how bones develop, and how genetic mutations cause hearing loss and neurological disorders.
“In those first two phases, the emphasis was on developing core facilities for specialized research and supporting new faculty,” Thompson said. “Now, we’ll expand the services provided by those cores and build sustainability through mentoring, training and pilot projects.”
OMRF scientist Lorin Olson, Ph.D., said Thompson’s first COBRE grant supplied crucial funding for his fledgling lab. More importantly, he said, it provided peers off whom he could bounce ideas. Olson, whose lab focuses on the intricate process of wound healing, has since secured two five-year grants from the NIH.
“When you’re training, your mentor is the primary audience for your ideas and writing,” he said. “But when you start your own lab, you no longer have that person to give you undivided attention. The COBRE support walked me through that period of new independence and showed me how to write successful grant applications.”
The NIH has awarded highly competitive R01 and R35 grants to nine OMRF scientists supported through the first two phases of Thompson’s grant. In all, researchers supported by the grant have garnered a combined $16.6 million in additional federal and private funding to OMRF.
The first two phases also buoyed core facilities that provide specialized microscopes, cutting-edge equipment to analyze cells and salary support for bioinformatics scientists to aid in data interpretation.
The NIH launched the COBRE program in 2000. The NIH has awarded three Phase 3 COBRE renewals to OMRF since the program’s inception. OMRF has one other active COBRE grant, awarded in 2021.
The National Institute of General Medical Sciences, part of the NIH, awarded the grant, 1P30GM149376-01.
