The longest continuously renewed NIH research grant at the School of Medicine has been renewed for five years and more than $11 million.
With the renewal, “Cyclotron Produced Isotopes in Biology and Medicine” will be extended into its 44th year of supporting research into imaging techniques and agents at the medical school.
Michael Welch
The historic grant supplied the funding that allowed physicist Michel Ter-Pogossian, Ph.D., professor of radiology, to lead the development of the first positron emission tomography (PET) scanner at the School of Medicine in the 1970s.
Ter-Pogossian was the principal investigator on the grant until 1984, when he was succeeded by Michael Welch, Ph.D., professor of radiology, of molecular biology and pharmacology and of chemistry.
For many years, the grant had been dedicated to imaging studies of the heart, lungs and brain. Its current renewal focuses on imaging the heart.
The renewed grant supports three research programs: development of new imaging agents to study cardiac disease; use of PET imaging to study heart damage in animal models of diabetes; and application of the imaging agents in a clinical setting with diabetic patients.
The common theme in all three programs is developing a better understanding of how diabetes is linked to heart disease, according to Welch.
“Cardiovascular disease is the most frequent cause of death in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes, and diabetics have a much higher incidence of hardening and narrowing of the arteries and of dysfunction in the pumping chambers of the heart,” Welch said.
Evidence has shown that diabetics have abnormal accumulation of fatty substances known as lipids in the myocardium, or the heart muscle. Scientists think this buildup promotes the creation of chemically reactive nitrogen and oxygen compounds that damage heart tissue.
The program to develop new imaging agents, headed by Robert Mach, Ph.D., professor of radiology, will work to develop agents that bind specifically to two compounds suspected of playing a role in the lipid buildup. They hope to adapt antidiabetic drugs already known to bind to the two target compounds for this purpose.
Researchers supported by this first program will also work to develop imaging agents that can help scientists follow the processes that damage heart tissue at the molecular level.
Welch leads the second program, which will use mice and rats to test both the imaging agents developed by Mach’s group and potential diabetes therapies.
“Because we’re looking at animal models, we’re going to be able to evaluate the impact that genetic changes have on cardiac metabolism and other tissues, and how those effects interact with the new therapeutic agents,” Welch said.
The third program, directed by Robert Gropler, M.D., professor of radiology and of medicine, will use imaging agents developed by the other two programs to assess the abilities of experimental diabetes therapies designed to control heart damage by decreasing lipid buildup in the heart.
Welch noted that when he first came to the University in 1967 as an assistant professor, he was paid from the grant.
“It’s a remarkable thing to contemplate, having spent nearly 40 years and a good part of your career being supported by a single grant, but this has been a remarkably successful grant,” Welch said.