Illinois Medicine

research and practice by Patrick Kampert T Bench and Bedside HE LAST TIME EDWIN COOK, MD, successfully sought funding from the National Institutes of Health, the finished application into it," says Cook, a psychiatry professor at the College of Medicine and a world-class researcher on autism. "It will be less next time—they've cut the page limit—but the reviewers aren't less picky because the application is shorter." "NIH funding is difficult to get," adds Sepideh Amin-Hanjani, MD, a College of Medicine neurosurgeon whose work targets strokes. "There is a stringent peer-review process, and the percentage that gets funding is very low." The government decision-makers for NIH grants may be highly selective, but they have found plenty to like in the laboratories and classrooms of the University of Illinois. Board-certified physicians in the College of Medicine combined their leading-edge research and active clinical work to merit more than $84 million from NIH in fiscal year 2010 to study everything from strokes to autism to cancer. "For the vast majority of biomedical research performed in Sepideh Amin-Hanjani, MD RESEARCH AMOUNT: $2.1 million YEARS: 5 CO-INVESTIGATORS: Fady T. Charbel, MD, Philip B. Gorelick, MD, Keith R. Thulborn, MD, Sean Ruland, DO, Dilip Pandey, MD, DeJuran Richardson, PhD RESEARCH TEAM:Linda Rose-Finnell, MPA, Karriem Watson, MD (University of Illinois at Chicago is lead of six centers conducting the study.) SYNOP SIS: The study assesses the relationship between blood flow in the back of the brain and stroke risk. was a nine-pound stack of paper. "That gives you a sense of how much goes STRIDES ALONG THE These Illinois Medicine researchers split their time between serving their patients and working on groundbreaking NIH research this country, the extent of NIH funding represents the major metric by which academic institutions, particularly those with medical centers, are assessed," explains Joe G.N. "Skip" Garcia, MD, vice president for health affairs at the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System. "At UIC, our talented researchers and translational scientists have garnered a significantly disproportionate amount of NIH funding," says Garcia, whose own research, through the college's Institute for Personal- ized Respiratory Medicine group, receives $7.7 million per year from NIH. "This is an incredible achievement, even more so given our faculty size. For many reasons, I am strongly optimistic that UIC funding from the NIH will be even more impressive in the years to come." Cook is studying autism spectrum disorders at the college's Autism Center of Excellence and four other sites. He is enthused about the University of Illinois' rise as a hub of top-tier clinical research. "I'm very excited about the direction that Dr. Garcia is taking the institution, and his leadership is one of the reasons I have stayed at UIC," Cook says. "I like the combination here of cutting-edge translational re- search as well as the strength of our ongoing interest in health disparities." What excites David Peace, MD, who's studying cancer in minority populations, is seeing how many people can be helped by treatments that have been developed in the College of Medicine's laboratories. "I see a lot of patients in the clinics—my primary focus is on pa- tients who have blood malignancies," he says. "I am always on the look- out for patients who might benefit from involvement in a study. People who go into a clinical protocol are closely scrutinized and given attention that isn't always available to others." AUTISM SPECTRUM Cook finds himself energized by the strides that researchers at the Col- lege of Medicine are making. "It's a good environment for translational research. We can go from bench to clinic, and clinic to bench," he says. "And the longer I'm here, the more I find people I wish I'd been working with all along," he says. Those collaborations extend beyond the walls of the college, says ILLINOIS MEDICINE | 23 PHOTO: LLOYD DEGRANE

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