Newswise — The PhRMA Foundation awarded more than $6 million over the last two years to more than 100 leaders in scientific research in the United States. The Foundation is proud to announce another successful year supporting innovative research efforts in areas of great importance: Alzheimer’s Disease, Melanoma, Parkinson’s Disease, Schizophrenia, Breast Cancer, Lung Cancer, Leukemia, Ulcerative Colitis, Vascular Disease, and Colorectal Cancer. This year the Foundation also funded two Centers of Excellence in Value Assessment.
“A supportive environment for biomedical research and development is essential in order to find the new treatments and cures that give patients hope,” said PhRMA Foundation President Eileen Cannon. “Foundation funding continues to be transformative in the careers of many of the nation’s most promising young scientists, ensuring them the resources they need to achieve groundbreaking research results at institutions throughout the United States.”
Several highlights from 2018 are:
Alzheimer’s Research
Norelle Wildburger, PhD, of Washington University in St. Louis is using her PhRMA Foundation funding to better understand the development process of plaque and tangles in Alzheimer’s patients. She and her team have launched a project, working with advanced Alzheimer’s patients who are studied during hospice and whose brains are donated to science following death, that will help shed new light on the timing of Alzheimer’s treatments. A short video explains and highlights Dr. Wildburger’s work. You can also watch an interview with Dr. Wildburger. She received a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Translational Medicine and Therapeutics in 2017.
Mark Ebbert, PhD, an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience with the Mayo Clinic, studies neurodegenerative diseases using cutting-edge sequencing technologies and computational approaches such as computational biology and bioinformatics. He received a 2017 Research Starter Grant in Translational Medicine and Therapeutics. Dr. Ebbert's research is focused strongly on Alzheimer's and helping medicine better understand the origins of this deadly disease. The underlying biology responsible for Alzheimer’s disease remains unclear, and diagnostics and effective treatments have eluded researchers for over 100 years, despite extensive efforts. You can watch a short video about Dr. Ebbert’s work at the PhRMA Foundation website.
Melanoma Research
A. Hunter Shain, PhD, of the University of California San Francisco Department of Dermatology, is a cancer geneticist who published groundbreaking research on gene patterns in malignant skin cancer. He is part of the UCSF team that identified the sequence of genetic changes that transform benign moles into malignant skin cancer. Dr. Shain’s research has identified molecular warning signs that could be used by clinicians to catch developing cancers before they spread and could also lead to new targeted therapies. He received a Research Starter Grant in Translational Medicine and Therapeutics in 2017. You can watch a short video interview online with Dr. Shain in which he describes the work of his team. The team was published July 9 in Cancer Cell.
Value Assessment
The PhRMA Foundation’s Value Assessment Initiative was launched in 2017 because of concern over rising U.S. health care costs in recent years has increased interest in promoting high-quality care, while avoiding low value or inefficient care. To date, the Foundation has provided more than $1.4 million to date to launch a range of research and innovation projects.
Two Centers of Excellences were awarded in 2018:
The first was awarded to George Miller, PhD, of Altarum – which, along with its partner, VBID Health, has launched the Research Consortium for Health Care Value Assessment. Dr. Miller and Mark Fendrick, MD, of VBID Health will lead the consortium promoting pursuit of value in health care delivery in the United States by identifying high- and low-value clinical services, tracking the use of such services, helping to ensure that consumer preferences are incorporated in health care decisions. It will work with researchers to identify the strategies that lead to better value, such as health benefit designs that incentivize the use of high-value services and discourage the use of low-value services. To learn more about the Research Consortium for Health Care Value Assessment, visit www.hcvalueassessment.org.
The second was awarded to a team of researchers of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research (PHSR) and Pharmacy Practice and Science (PPS) at the University of Maryland (UMD) School of Pharmacy. Led by Susan dosReis, PhD, professor in PHSR, the center will strive to promote the inclusion of diverse patient voices in research to help uncover the elements of value in health care that are most important to patients. More details about UMD’s center, known as PAVE: Patient-Driven Value in Healthcare Evaluation, will be coming soon.
More information about the PhRMA Foundation’s Value Assessment Initiative and our full range of programs is available by visiting the Foundation’s website at www.phrmafoundation.org.
A full list of the Foundation's 2018 Fellowship and Grant Recipients includes:
VALUE ASSESSMENT
Josh Carlson, PhD
University of Washington
Susan dosReis, PhD
University of Maryland, Baltimore
Lou Garrison, PhD
University of Washington
Robin Z. Hayeems, ScM, PhD
The Hospital for Sick Children Research
Institute
Quang A. Le, PharmD, PhD
Western University of Health Sciences
College of Pharmacy
George Miller, PhD
Altarum
Shelby Reed, PhD
Duke University
Gillian Sanders Schmidler, PhD
Duke University
Andrian Towse, MPhil, MA
The Office of Health Economists
FACULTY DEVELOPMENT AWARD IN
CLINICAL & TRANSLATIONAL
PHARMACOLOGY
Matthew M. Ippolito, MD
Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine
HEALTH OUTCOMES
Tessa J. Hastings
Auburn University
Nathaniel D. Hendrix, PharmD
University of Washington
Ruixuan Jiang, PharmD
University of Illinois, Chicago
Uriel Kim
Case Western Reserve University School
of Medicine
Brittany R. Lapin, MPH, PhD
Cleveland Clinic
Kathy Trang
Emory University
Andrew D. Wiese, MPH, PhD
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
INFORMATICS
Cynthia R. Dickerson
University of Kentucky
Jonathon M. Gast
Purdue University
Sam B. Gelman
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Kenneth B. Hoehn, DPhil
Yale University
Hila Sberro Livnat, PhD
Stanford University
Anna Ulrika Lowegard
Duke University
Rendong Yang, PhD
University of Minnesota
PAUL CALABRESI MEDICAL STUDENT
FELLOWSHIP
Mihailo Miljanic
Dell Medical School
PHARMACEUTICS
Christine Bowman
University of California, San Francisco
Julie Lorraine Calahan
University of Kentucky
Bodhisattwa Chaudhuri, PhD
University of Connecticut
Shunji Egusa, PhD
The University of North Carolina, Charlotte
Lauren Kathleen Fontana
University of Connecticut
Anjana Jeyaram
University of Maryland, College Park
Peter Alan Kleindl
University of Kansas
William Mark Payne
University of Nebraska Medical Center
Davin Rautiola
University of Minnesota
PHARMACOLOGY/TOXICOLOGY
John A. Allen, PhD
University of Texas Medical Branch
Katelyn M. Arnold
The University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill
Sarah Elizabeth Binion
Marshall University
Daniel J Blackwell, PhD
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Amanda Kay Davis
University of Michigan
Riann Jenay Egusquiza
University of California, Irvine
Tamara Escajadillo
University of California, San Diego
Ryan S. Funk, PharmD, PhD
University of Kansas
Jeffrey A Rappaport
Thomas Jefferson University
Taha Y. Taha
University of Illinois, Chicago
Kaitlyn Thompson
Stony Brook University
Joseph Tillotson, PhD
Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine
Julia Tobacyk
University of Arkansas for Medical
Sciences
Shira Yomtoubian
Weill Cornell Medicine
REGULATORY SCIENCE
Melinda Johnson, PhD
Johns Hopkins University
Cameron Kieffer, PhD
Creighton University School of Medicine
TRANSLATIONAL MEDICINE &
THERAPEUTICS
Alex Bishara, PhD
University of California, San Francisco
Sam Emaminejad, PhD
University of California, Los Angeles
Kasi C. McPherson, PhD
University of Alabama, Birmingham
Yong Zhang, PhD
University of Southern California
AWARD IN EXCELLENCE IN CLINICAL &
TRANSLATIONAL PHARMACOLOGY
Darrell Abernethy, MD, PhD
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
(awarded posthumously)
AWARD IN EXCELLENCE IN
PHARMACOLOGY/TOXICOLOGY
Gavril Pasternak, MD, PhD
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
About the PhRMA Foundation
The mission of the PhRMA Foundation is to support young scientists in disciplines important to the pharmaceutical industry by awarding them competitive research fellowships and grants at a critical decision point at the outset of their careers. For more than 50 years, the Foundation has been helping to build a larger pool of highly-trained, top-quality scientists to help meet the growing needs of scientific and academic institutions, government, and the research-intensive pharmaceutical industry. Since its founding, it has distributed more than $90 million to support scientific research. To learn more, please visit www.phrmafoundation.org.
RSS