"Some are going to pan out and when they do, they will be a home run."—ACR REF President James R. O'Dell, MD.
"These [grantees and grants] are the best of the best," ACR REF President James R. O'Dell, MD, a rheumatologist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, in Omaha, told CIAOMed. "Our goal was not to fund another me-too study, it was to get the best scientists to give us the best ideas. Some may be high-risk ideas because of their innovative nature and some are going to pan out and when they do, they will be a home run."The best and the brightest
"We were overwhelmed by the number of applications we received for the initial round of grants," Dr. O'Dell said. "We really hit a nerve out there in terms of people needing to have a source of money."
While the campaign boldly aims to find a cure for rheumatoid arthritis (RA), Dr. O'Dell admitted that there are many different ways to define such a cure. "A cure for RA might be finding what the trigger is that causes RA in the first place, and then it might be preventing a whole population from being exposed to the trigger," he said. "It might be treating RA when it is fully manifested with a group of medications, and then allowing the patient to come off these medications and never have to take them again."
"We have great treatments for RA that are much better than they were 20 years ago, but they aren't cures. Even if we put patients into remission, we can only maintain it by keeping them on therapy."
The new grants fund innovative research, translational research, and clinical practice; grant recipients and proposals include:
Paul Anderson, MD, PhD
Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston
Post-transcriptional regulation of TNF-alpha production
Robert H. Carter, MD
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Autoantigen-specific B-cells in rheumatoid arthritis
Gary S. Firestein, MD
University of California at San Diego School of Medicine
Neural regulation of synovial inflammation
Richard A. Flavell, PhD, FRS
Yale University School of Medicine
Regulation of T-cell function in collagen-induced arthritis by IL-10
Gary Gilkeson, MD
Medical University of South Carolina
Role of sphingosine kinase I in inflammatory arthritis
Joseph Holoshitz, MD
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
Functional characterization of the rheumatoid arthritis shared epitope binding receptor
Eizabeth D. Mellins, MD
Stanford University School of Medicine
MHC association in rheumatoid arthritis: a novel hypothesis
John D. Mountz, MD, PhD
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Novel IL-17 induced germinal center formation and arthritis-inducing autoantibodies
Recipients of grants for translational research proposals include:
S. Louis Bridges, Jr, MD, PhD
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Genetics and ethnic differences in C-reactive protein as a biomarker of radiographic severity in rheumatoid arthritis
David M. Lee, MD, PhD
Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston
IgG glycosylation and rheumatoid arthritis
Antony Rosen, MD
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore
Anti-PADI4 immune responses in rheumatoid arthritis: markers of disease propagation
Cornelia M. Weyand, MD, PhD
Emory University, Atlanta
Defects of hematopoietic stem cell function in rheumatoid arthritis
Grant recipients for clinical practice proposals include:
Joan M. Bathon, MD
Johns Hopkins Arthritis Center, Baltimore
Rheumatoid arthritis and body composition
Harold E. Paulus, MD
University of California at Los Angeles
Joint MRI to validate clinical remission criteria in early rheumatoid arthritis
Edward Yelin, PhD
University of California at San Francisco
Disparities in utilization and outcomes in rheumatoid arthritis
Grantees receive $400,000 over a 2-year period, "Every penny of every dollar is spent on research," Dr. O'Dell said.
The second round of grants will be awarded on July 1, 2008. To learn more about the campaign, visit http://www.WithinOurReach.info.
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