PRINTResearching remedies
Attempting to cure cancer and other diseases
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December 18, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Over the past seven years, MU has increased funding for medical research by almost 200 percent and created 90,000 square feet of freshly renovated research space. It also boasts the most powerful university research nuclear reactor in the nation and more than 1,000 life-science researchers across the campus. From better understanding Alzheimer’s to working on potential cures for cancer, researchers at MU are pushing to improve medical treatment across the country.
Through support from the National Institute of Health and donations from alumni, Mizzou spends an average of $44 million on medical research a year. The university opened the MU Biochemistry Complex in February and the International Institute of Nano and Molecular Medicine in October, each costing $10 million and encompassing 26,000 square feet. These buildings greatly enhanced the progress of these research departments and continue to convince leading researchers from across the country to come to Columbia.
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In March, Margaret Proctor Mulligan’s estate made a donation of more than $6 million to 12 faculty research positions that research breast cancer and cardiovascular disease. Mulligan’s personal battle with breast cancer inspired her decision to donate.
The donation, which was made after her death in 2000 at the age of 97, helps professors research potential solutions to these serious health conditions. The doctors benefitting from Mulligan’s donation research everything from preventing the spread of cancer cells to earlier detection of the disease.
Jerry Parker, associate dean of research at MU, believes that the university’s research in cancer, diabetes, musculoskeletal illness, neuroscience and infectious diseases sets it apart from other universities in the country. “There are a number of schools — the School of Medicine, Veterinary Medicine, Engineering, Nursing, Arts and Science and Plant Sciences — within easy walking distances from each other,” Parker says. “It makes collaboration easy, and collaboration is very important to research.”
Understanding Alzheimer’s
Two professors of biochemistry, Grace Sun and Gary Weisman, currently lead a project aimed at finding potential causes of Alzheimer’s. The disease affects 4 million people in the United States and continues to grow at a rapid rate.
With funding from the National Institute of Health and MU, Sun and Weisman have identified a protein called the amyloid beta protein that appears to impair brain functions and could quite possibly lead to Alzheimer’s. “We are still studying this protein and trying to understand why it is toxic when it becomes aggregated into a specific form,” Sun says.
Working with Gibson Wood, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Minnesota, Sun hopes to better understand the disease and ultimately find a treatment for this common illness. According to a recent article published in Chronicles of Aging by the Interdisciplinary Center on Aging at MU, the Alzheimer’s research program is in its second five years of funding by the National Institutes of Health. Sun and Weisman hope to begin testing animal models to identify strategies for slowing down the development of the disease.
Seeking safer treatments for cancer
Researchers at the new International Institute of Nano and Molecular Medicine have been working on Boron Neutron Capture Therapy, a complex plan that might one day lead to treatments for some deadly forms of cancer. It works to treat cancers while only causing minor damage to the cells. It would be much safer than the current treatments available such as surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy.
Led by Director Fred Hawthorne and a team of 25 researchers, the research combines chemistry, nanotechnology and radiation biology to identify safer treatments that have yet to be explored in the medical field.
Hawthorne came to the university in August 2006 to take advantage of the wide range of science and humanities disciplines on campus as well as the distinctive research reactor located within walking distance of the laboratory.
Exploring the microscopic
Steven Segal is a professor in the Department of Medical Pharmacology and Physiology and an investigator in the Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center. He recently received The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s Method to Extend Research in Time Award for his work with vascular disease, particularly in microcirculation.
Segal’s particular area of expertise, microcirculation, deals with blood flow to and from microscopic blood vessels called arterioles and capillaries. “The heart pumps blood, and the vessels that leave the heart, branch out and get smaller and smaller and smaller,” he says. “We tend to use microscopes to research the smallest arteries in the body.”
His research could find ways to fight vascular disease associated with hypertension, diabetes or the effects of aging on the human body. “We are assembling a group of scientists with an interest in microcirculation,” Segal explains.
Ultimately, the goal is to provide steps for medical investigators to build upon in the future.
“In the research that I do, we try and figure out how the cells signal each other, how these cells actually talk to each other and how cell-to-cell communication gets screwed up,” Segal says. “I am trying to provide the foundation so that people who are researching the disease can use what I have learned.”
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