BATON ROUGE - LSU has received an $18.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, to support an Institutional Development Award, or IDeA, Network of Biomedical Research Excellence, or INBRE. The IDeA program builds research capacities in states that historically have had low levels of NIH funding by supporting basic, clinical and translational research; faculty development; and infrastructure improvements. IDeA is administered by NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences and is a component of its Center for Research Capacity Building.
LSU’s INBRE, named the Louisiana Biomedical Research Network, or LBRN, was established
in September 2001. This $18.5 million grant was matched by a $1.2 million supplement
from the Board of Regents. This is the third five-year grant received for this program.
The total funding awarded for the LBRN program is now more than $55 million.
LBRN provides infrastructure support, education, training and research opportunities
for students and faculty at primarily undergraduate institutions and fosters connections
of primarily undergraduate institutions, or PUIs, with biomedical research intensive
universities and institutes within the state. Thomas R. Klei, Boyd Professor in the LSU SVM Department of Pathobiological Sciences, is the principle
investigator, and E. William Wischusen, associate professor of biological sciences, is the program coordinator.
“The overall goal of this competitive grant is to facilitate the growth of biomedical
research activities in the state,” Klei said. “Previous funding enabled the LBRN to
establish a strong foundation for interdisciplinary and inter-institutional research,
cyber-infrastructure, education, training and mentoring programs. The LBRN programs
are poised to increase the biomedical workforce within Louisiana and create a pipeline
of needed future research scientists. During the past five years, faculty at the participating
PUIs have won 17 federal research awards for more than $5 million. This success will
continue as the INBRE grant provides research opportunities for an increasingly diverse
pool of both graduate and undergraduate students and faculty and will encourage collaborative
research activities.”
Extensive research is conducted by faculty and undergraduate and graduate students
at seven universities in the state, including Louisiana Tech University, LSU Shreveport,
Grambling State University, Southern University, Southeastern Louisiana University
and Xavier University. Researchers and students at these schools are paired with mentors
and collaborators at the state’s biomedical research-intensive centers, including
LSU, the LSU Health Sciences Centers in Shreveport and New Orleans, Pennington Biomedical
Research Center, Tulane Medical Center and Tulane National Primate Research Center.
The program also includes an extensive summer research training program for undergraduates
and includes students from 23 undergraduate institutions in the state.
“This INBRE, which links educational and research institutions throughout Louisiana,
has created a pathway to biomedical and health research careers for undergraduate
students,” said W. Fred Taylor, who directs the IDeA program at NIH’s National Institute
of General Medical Sciences. “The program has also developed a strong bioinformatics
core and cyberinfrastructure capability and has established a collaborative network
with nine IDeA Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence to provide basic through
translational research experiences. The next phase of funding will enable this INBRE
to strengthen and expand on these important activities.”
The LSU School of Veterinary Medicine is a dynamic community dedicated to saving lives,
finding cures, and changing lives through outstanding clinical and community service,
groundbreaking research, and educational excellence. For more information, visit www.vetmed.lsu.edu/.
LSU Media Relations
225-578-5685