PROVIDENCE – More than $360,000 in seed funding has been awarded by the Rhode Island Foundation to 15 medical research projects to help early-career researchers advance projects to the point where they are competitive for national funding, the nonprofit announced Friday.
The foundation says the research work ranges from a study looking at whether romantic relationships can reduce the risk of stroke to a project that could help better cope with attention deficit hyperactive disorder. Additionally, the foundation says the grants were available to study infectious diseases, cardiac research, coronary artery disease, cerebral accidents, cancer, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, diabetes, allergies and performance enhancing substances.
“Together with our visionary donors, we are providing the crucial source of early funding that enables local researchers to purse promising medical advances,” foundation CEO and President David N. Cicilline said in a statement. “Our hope is that their successes will lead to substantial new investments in the state’s research sector that will grow our economy and improve the health of Rhode Islanders.”
Each individual grant ranged between $20,000 and $25,000. The University of Rhode Island received seven grants totaling $165,401 for various research projects, including studies on access and safety of opioid agonist therapy in pregnant women and serotonin neuron modulation after spinal cord injury.
Providence College received three grants totaling $73,769 for research projects, such as investigating signaling networks linking cell size and growth to the cell cycle and medial prefrontal cortical circuits in motivation and depression.
Rhode Island Hospital got two grants worth $50,000 from the foundation to look at health care transition of adolescents living with HIV in Rwanda and the implementation and evaluation of pre-hospital trauma program for community health workers in far-west Nepal.
Roger Williams University, Brown University and the Ocean State Research Institute each received $25,000 from the foundation for their respective projects. They each plan to look at cognitive impairments in a mouse model of bipolar disorder, the impact of small intestinal microbiome in sepsis during aging and impaired inflammatory arteriogenesis is the result of IL-1beta resistance and macrophage IL-1 receptor complex protein defects in the context of chronic Diabetes mellitus.
James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter at @James_Bessette.
