LSUHSC awarded $10M+ COBRE grant

New Orleans, LA – LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans has been awarded $10,058,325 in funding over five years by the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), a part of the National Institutes of Health. This Center of Biological Research Excellence (COBRE) grant funds cardiovascular research projects and provides mentoring to junior faculty, enabling them to successfully compete nationally for research funding. The competitive award continues the program funded by the initial $10.5 million cardiovascular COBRE grant awarded to LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans in 2003 and brings the total funded by NCRR to this project to more than $20.5 million over ten years.

"This $10 million competitive award represents a significant sign of recovery and recognition of the quality of research here at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans," notes Dr. Larry Hollier, LSUHSC Chancellor. "This type of grant is even more valuable than the monetary award because grants like this provide comprehensive support to the research pipeline. They not only fund basic science research which underlies treatment advances, but they also help develop the next generation of competitively funded faculty research scientists."

The selection of Junior and Developing Investigators is highly competitive and is based upon the quality of their research proposals, the stage of career development and their potential for development as independently funded investigators.

"The goal of our COBRE grant is to provide strong mentoring and research support to a select group of outstanding scientists and clinicians who focus on understanding mechanisms of cardiovascular disease to the development of novel therapeutics," says Dr. Daniel Kapusta, Professor of Pharmacology at LSUHSC-New Orleans, who is principal investigator and Director of the Cardiovascular COBRE program. "This grant will help to launch the careers of these developing scientists and expand the number of nationally funded investigators in New Orleans and the State of Louisiana," says Kapusta. He also adds, "This COBRE grant provides a platform to transition our cardiovascular biology program to a self-sustaining and nationally recognized Cardiovascular Center of Excellence at LSUHSC. The need for such a mission is apparent from the tragic state of cardiovascular disease not only in the United States, but within our home state of Louisiana."