Friday, October 2, 2009

Stimulus bill awards DCRI millions in NIH grants

As part of the federal stimulus bill, $10 billion was earmarked for National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants to fund new research. Duke University Medical Center was awarded a one-year total of $80 million from those grants.

The DCRI's Business Development group has been actively pursuing these grants and succeeded in securing $17 million (22 percent) of the Duke grants for the DCRI, DCRU (Duke Clinical Research Unit), and the DTRI (Duke Translational Research Institute). Almost $14 million of that is business for the DCRI, divided over 12 grants. The total is for one year.

North Carolina was awarded 521 grants funded by the stimulus bill.

The biggest project for the DCRI is $5.5 million for DCRI to serve as the clinical coordinating center for the PROMISE trial, with Pamela Douglas, MD as the trial's principal investigator.

The other grants for more than $1 million each include:

• $3.7 million for CARRA: Accelerating toward an evidence-based culture in pediatric rheumatology
• $1.3 million for American College of Cardiology/Duke partnership for a national cardiovascular research infrastructure (NCRI)
• $1.2 million for the PROMISE trial (statistical and data coordinating center)