Marshall Magazine Autumn 2022

Disorders (ACCORD) at Marshall University was founded several years ago. Through the Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) program of the National Institutes of Health, Sundaram and his team were awarded a nearly $11 million grant to investigate obesity. “This program will allow us to not only perform research in obesity and its complications, but also provide funding to train the next generation of biomedical researchers and establish important infrastructures to perform state-of-the-art research at Marshall,” said Sundaram, principal investigator of the grant. NIH has also awarded grants to fund other entities, including the IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) in part nership with West Virginia University, led by Dr. Gary Rankin, chair of the JCESOM Department of Pharmacology. “INBRE uses the research experience at WVU and Marshall to foster student and faculty research activity at primarily undergraduate institutions in the state, and it creates a statewide network of people who are trained and going into careers in biomedical research,” Maher explained. “It has a “ If people were not doing research , we wouldn ’ t have transistors , iPhones or cholesterol drugs . All of that comes from people asking basic questions and training students to be curious . ” — Dr. John Maher vice president for research

profound impact on research competitiveness and on the lives and the careers of the students who are now leaving the undergraduate institutions to go on to graduate or medical studies.” Sundaram, who has been at Marshall for nine years and has practiced gastroenterology at Marshall andWVU for almost 20 years, said a priority among university researchers is to “concentrate our efforts on research that is relevant to our patients.” Because many West Virginians face difficulty in traveling to receive the latest and most advanced care, the Marshall Clinical Research Center (MCRC) was established to bring advancements in treatment and medicine to the area. It supports and grants patients access to clinical trial programs and pro motes clinical and translational research to provide advanced care that otherwise is not available for patients in the region. “The goal with the MCRC is to bring the latest treatment available by the government and pharma ceutical companies to our locale so patients don’t have to travel too far,” Sundaram said. Recently, Sundaram and his team completed a clinical trial with a new medication that specifically treats patients with liver complications of obesity.

Dr. Gary Rankin is the principal investigator of the NIH-funded West Virginia IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence.

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