NIH Funds Dartmouth Study of Cellular Disease Processes

The five-year, $12.45 million grant supports an interdisciplinary project for junior faculty.

Dartmouth has received a five-year, $12.45 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to establish an interdisciplinary project to explore how research into diseases such as cancer can help uncover new cellular processes, and to accelerate the translation of basic biological research into treatments.

Known as iTarget, the project will fund and provide mentoring for junior faculty who are engaged in early-stage research exploring the most basic cellular processes and how disease affects the interaction of cells and molecules.

The Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) grant, administered by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, supports the development of Dartmouth’s iTarget project as an interdisciplinary biomedical research center with a emphasis on mentoring junior faculty research.

The iTarget institute will knit together lines of inquiry and laboratory resources from 10 departments across the faculty of Arts and Sciences, Geisel School of Medicine, and Thayer School of Engineering. In addition, the COBRE funding is available for renewal over two additional five-year periods.

The focus on an interdisciplinary approach to biomedical research and on faculty mentoring plays to Dartmouth’s strengths, says Dean Madden, a Geisel professor of biochemistry and cell biology, director of the iTarget project, and principal investigator of the COBRE award.

“This community is very collaborative, very collegial, and already has low barriers to cooperation. We will be leveraging that underlying strength when pursuing this interdisciplinary approach,” Madden says. “In addition, Dartmouth has an extremely strong culture of mentoring, which is a really critical aspect of COBRE success.”

Read more at Dartmouth News...