By Phil Williams
University of Georgia
The National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), a component
of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded a five-year
grant of $6.7 million to a team headed by scientists at the
University of Georgia for research that could eventually help
in the treatment of certain kinds of cancer and Parkinson’s
Disease.
The grant is cosponsored by the National Cancer Institute and
thereby counts toward the total award dollars needed to apply
for an NCI Comprehensive Cancer Center Planning Award. This
could be an important step in progress for the Georgia Cancer
Coalition, in which UGA is collaborating with the Medical
College of Georgia in Augusta to form the Georgia Cancer
Research Center.
“This grant demonstrates yet again the quality of our faculty
involved in research at the University of Georgia,” said
President Michael F. Adams. “The potential to alleviate human
suffering through this work makes it tremendously important.”
The large-scale cooperative project will include researchers
from UGA, Georgia Tech, the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory
University, Yale University and Bresagen, Inc., as well as
scientists from Japan.
“We are delighted that our work is increasingly drawing this
kind of support,” said Michael Pierce, principal investigator
for the grant and faculty member at the Complex Carbohydrate
Research Center and the Department of Biochemistry and
Molecular Biology. “It demonstrates the high quality of our
faculty and staff at the CCRC and at UGA, as well as those at
Georgia Tech.”
The NCRR supports primary research to create and develop
critical resources, models and technologies. NCRR funding also
provides biomedical researchers with access to diverse
instrumentation, technologies, basic and clinical research
facilities, animal models, genetic stocks, biomaterials and
more. These resources enable scientific advances in biomedicine
that lead to the development of lifesaving drugs, devices and
therapies.
The research funded by the grant will focus on technologies to
map the “glycome” of stem cell lines established by Bresagen, a
private research company with offices and laboratories in
Athens. “Glycome” describes all the complex carbohydrates
attached to proteins and lipids that are made by a cell, as
well as the enzymes responsible for their metabolism. It also
describes the carbohydrate binding proteins that function by
recognizing these complex carbohydrates.
“This proposal was one of only seven funded nationally in this
first grant competition, so naturally, we are pleased,” said
Pierce.
This technology will allow the glycomic analysis of small
numbers of cells and the means to isolate or kill these
particular cells. The expected outcome will be directly
applicable to the isolation of certain types of nerve cells for
treatment of such diseases as Parkinson’s, as well as
development of new ways to diagnose and treat cancer.
“I believe that this research will further our basic
understanding of stem cells,” said Steve Stice, a collaborator
on the grant and a UGA CAES professor and Georgia Research
Alliance eminent scholar with the UGA animal and dairy science
department.
Others in the research project include Kelley Moremen, Ron
Orlando, Parastoo Asadi and Will York of the CCRC; Armit Sheth,
John Miller and Krzysztof Kochut of UGA’s computer science
department and its Large Scale Distributed Information Systems
Laboratory; Ian Lyons of Bresagen, Inc. (and an adjunct
professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at UGA); and
Alfred Merrill of Georgia Tech.
The Georgia Cancer Coalition (GCC) is a statewide public-
private network of people and organizations – doctors,
hospitals, government agencies, public health services,
survivor and community health groups, universities, industries,
nonprofits and interested individuals – working together to
save lives and reduce human suffering from cancer.
Russ Toal, president of the Georgia Cancer Coalition, noted
that “this grant award underscores Georgia’s and UGA’s
determination to fight cancer with the best weapons in our
arsenal: university leadership, quality faculty, world-class
research, multi-institutional collaborations, public-private
partnerships and commitment to being a leader in the war
against this killer. We congratulate Dr. Pierce and his
colleagues for all their good work, and we will do all we can
to support their efforts in the years ahead.”
