Durbin Announces $2.5 Million in Recovery Act Funding for NIH Research in Illinois
[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL) today announced that Illinois will receive $2,528,063 in funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. These National Institutes of Health grants, allocated by the Department of Health and Human Services, will support biomedical research and training. The following programs in Illinois will receive funding:
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: $230,281 in funding for a study that seeks to determine how the influenza protein NS1 inhibits immune cells from building their usual antiviral defense;
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: $183,171 in funding for researchers to examine cellular response to chemical stimuli in their environment, to see how the response influences later organization and integrity of tissues, with possible relevance to cancer;
• Children’s Memorial Hospital: $678,380 in funding for a study that seeks to identify susceptibility genes for food allergy, which should have important implications for developing new food allergy prevention and treatment strategies;
• University of Chicago: $78,000 in funding for a project to study mice with genetic mutations that cause them to have ataxia (uncoordinated walking) and epilepsy in order to better understand the way these disorders can develop and affect humans;
• University of Illinois at Chicago: $611,906 in funding for a study that will help understand how terrorist incidents, wartime deployments, and natural disasters affect levels of drinking related problems and thus negatively impact public health;
• Northwestern University: $436,112 in funding for a project that examines whether reduction of a protein that affects fear-associated learning and memory. This research could further explain the brain mechanisms underlying Post Traumatic Stress Disorder;
• Loyola University Chicago: $310,213 in funding for a project that will provide a framework for melanoma prevention; development of targeted small-molecules to induce eumelanin, leading to a reduction in incidence of melanoma.