PROVIDENCE – Two research teams at Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island will receive 2009 Collaborative Research Awards totaling $400,000 from the R.I. Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC), through its Research Alliance program, the hospital said today.
• One award, in the amount of $200,000, is for a project entitled “An Application of the 3D Petri-Dish: The Human Artificial Ovary,” which would enable doctors to preserve eggs removed from women facing cancer treatment.
Dr. Sandra A. Carson – director of the Center for Reproduction and Infertility at Women & Infants Hospital and the hospital’s Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University – will share the award with two other members of the Brown faculty: Jeffrey Morgan, co-director of the Center for Biomedical Engineering at Brown University, where he is an associate professor of medical science and engineering; and Anubhav Tripathi, an assistant professor in the Brown Division of Engineering’s chemical and biochemical engineering program.
When a woman is born, her ovaries contain all the eggs that will ever develop during her lifetime. But cancer treatment can damage or destroy these eggs. The researchers hope their novel culture system will enable specialists to remove the eggs from patients facing cancer therapy and safely nurture them until the patient has recovered.
“Exciting as this may sound,” Carson said, “it pales when compared with the extensions of learning that we may glean from such a culture system.
“Oocytes in storage will reveal their secrets to investigators who test the environment around them and unravel the communications among these cellular partners. The system also promises the possibility of testing environmental stresses and toxins which may impair our reproductive capacity. We may soon be able to answer such questions as, ‘Does caffeine have any effect on eggs?’ ”
• The other award, also for $200,000, is to support a project entitled “Identification of Deficiencies and Establishment of Predictive Assays for Enigmatic Pregnancy Complications.”
Lead researcher Dr. Surendra Sharma – a research scientist in the hospital’s Department of Pediatrics and a Brown medical professor – will be joined by collaborators Dr. James F. Padbury, pediatrician-in-chief at Women & Infants and Brown’s Warren Alpert Medical School; and Zahir Shaikh, a professor of pharmacy and toxicology at the University of Rhode Island.
Complications such as preeclampsia and intrauterine growth restrictions (IUGR) affect 10 to 15 percent of pregnancies. The researchers are focusing on blood-serum testing in hopes of developing in vitro (test-tube) and in vivo models for the diagnosis and treatment of these potentially lethal conditions.
“Working collaboratively, we hope to identify a novel protein found in patients suffering from pregnancy complications, such as preeclampsia, that can be used to identify a treatment which will impede these traumatic pregnancy issues,” Sharma said. “Once the potential protein(s) are identified, experimental models will aid in finding those that can save a pregnancy and those that cause complications.”
The projects are among seven statewide – involving 23 researchers at 10 institutions – to which STAC last month awarded $1.38 million in grants through its Research Alliance program. (READ MORE) Grant amounts and other details were not previously available.
Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island – a member of the Care New England health care network and the Brown University Medical School’s primary teaching affiliate for obstetrics, gynecology and newborn pediatrics – houses the 10th largest obstetrical service in the country, with more than 9,000 deliveries per year. It has been named a National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2003, and has three times been listed among the nation’s best hospitals in gynecology in the U.S. News & World Report’s annual ranking of America’s Best Hospitals (in 2000, 2001 and 2004). To learn more, visit www.WomenAndInfants.org.
The R.I. Science and Technology Advisory Council, or STAC, was created in 2005 to help turn Rhode Island into a regional hub for the life sciences, information technology and other research-based industries. Its R.I. Research Alliance Collaborative Research Award Program grants aim to encourage collaboration among disparate players in the state’s research and development community. For more information about the Collaborative Research Award Program, or to apply for Research Alliance funding, contact Christine Smith at csmith@riedc.com or visit www.stac.ri.gov.
