Advancing cardiac treatments, attracting talent, job creation, and spurring economic development are just a few of the direct and ancillary benefits experts are predicting for the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), thanks to a recent grant awarding $12 million to the institution’s Center for Heart & Vascular Research.
The award solidifies the organization’s already stellar reputation as a national leader in the field of cardiac medicine, said Dr. Dele Davies, interim UNMC chancellor.
“We have one of the top cardiac centers, between UNMC and Nebraska Medicine, in the country,” he said. “What we’ve been able to do over several years is to bring together outstanding top physicians and surgeons and bring together a strong cadre of outstanding researchers who aim to improve cardiac health, not just for Nebraska, but for the whole nation.
“In order to apply for this kind of grant, you have to have a lot of superstars, people who everybody knows when these guys say they’re going to do something, they’re going to do it, because they have a track record of doing it. It’s not just that we’re good at this, we’re going to continue it and build on the model and the facilities and the reputation that we have.”
The award, announced in January, is presented by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and will create a Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) focused on finding answers for heart and vascular diseases. COBRE is a highly regarded stamp of approval and source of support from the National Institutes of Health and its National Institute of General Medical Sciences.
The sweeping grant will be used to fund several elements of research as well as mechanisms for allowing research finding to more quickly reach the front-line medical professionals, Davies said.
“Traditionally, you have a basic scientist do the work, they publish it in a scientific journal, and there may or may not be anybody to pick it up from there to say, ‘How do we transfer this into what actually benefits the patients directly?’” he said.
“By having this type of multidisciplinary team, we can continue to have basic scientists working beside translational scientists working beside clinicians to say, ‘How do we take what we’re learning in the lab and how do we move that into actual efforts that can then be tested at the bedside and also tested as a population?’”
Principal investigator Rebekah Gundry, PhD, headed the grant application effort. She said the award is unique even among other COBRE institutions because it allows UNMC to award dollars to individual investigators as they go about their research.
“Three of our investigators are actually clinicians who do research. They are working directly with patients, and they are in a great position to be able to develop new knowledge in therapies to directly help their patients,” she said, noting one of the organization’s current researchers is a physician looking for ways to increase the number of hearts available for transplant.
“If you have a really sick heart, and there’s no available treatment for your condition, in some cases the only available course of action is a heart transplant,” she said. “Well, there’s a very limited number of hearts that are available for transplant; you may be a good candidate to receive one, but maybe there is no heart that comes available.
“What this research is doing is making improvements to how we can collect those hearts and keep them really strong so they’re good quality for transplant and they perform better once they’re transplanted. That is a measurable outcome that will come from this research, making more hearts available for transplant, which means more patients that need hearts will be able to access them.”
Gundry also said the award translates to hard dollars for the community as the money enables investigators to recruit staff to help carry out their research, a task made easier by UNMC’s stellar reputation.
“The award recognizes that the institution is incredibly invested in research,” Gundry said. “In order to even be competitive for this award, we had to be able to demonstrate that we have unprecedented support all the way from the chancellor and the president to the deans on down. All of that support is there, and UNMC is vested in creating and supporting this infrastructure. Having all those things in place is really critical to what we want to accomplish.”
Community leaders outside the UNMC family also applauded the award for its potential impact on economic development. Heath Mello, CEO and president of the Greater Omaha Chamber, said the emergence of medical research as an industry segment will pay dividends on Main Street as well as in the operating room.
“This kind of research is putting UNMC and Omaha on the map across the United States and across the globe,” he said. “The work that UNMC is doing not just in this space, but in other spaces such as cancer research through the Fred and Pamela Buffett Cancer Center and the Global Center for Health Security, where they’re focusing on infectious disease research, are very unique initiatives that UNMC has been able to elevate.
“Having a world-renowned medical center that is focusing on this research means finding amazing researchers and faculty members to work on this and bringing them to Omaha, Nebraska. That represents tremendous potential impact for our region and our state.”
Mello said hints of what’s to come are already on display in Midtown, where development is ongoing to help provide the physical spaces needed for the medical research industry to capitalize on its current and future momentum.
“I think this NIH grant only cements the opportunity that exists, with the new Catalyst Building and, hopefully, the soon-to-be Innovation District that UNMC is currently building in and around their campus,” he said. “That focus on the startup and commercialization of research clearly has potential for partnerships with private sector companies in the Omaha area.
“The impact of the grant, possibly leading to additional research grants, has tremendous economic potential for UNMC, for midtown Omaha, and the whole regional economy in terms of what UNMC is trying to do to grow the bio economy in the greater Omaha area.”
The award continues the impressive string of accomplishments the Center for Heart and Vascular Research has built since its founding in 2019. In that short period, the entity has quickly reached one impressive milestone after another, from partnering on the creation of a new heart stent to building a one-of-a-kind repository for collecting heart and vascular tissue and blood for research, to uncovering new molecules in the heart that can effectively serve as mapping agents, helping physicians deliver therapies to the right place.
“I think the message is really about our people and the ability and opportunity we have had to recruit outstanding individuals here. They are the ones that make awards like this happen,” Davies said. “At the end of the day, it’s really about having a reputation that allows us to bring the very best people here to work together. This is great for Nebraska, ultimately, and it’s great for our nation.”
For more information, visit unmc.edu/chvr.
This article originally appeared in the October/November 2024 issue of B2B Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
