A five-year, $20 million federal grant awarded to an initiative led by the Pennington Biomedical Research Center—and including seven other higher education, research and health care institutions in the state—will establish a biomedical research network in Louisiana that eliminates barriers to current collaborative efforts and leverages the resources of all the participating institutions, says Dr. William Cefalu, Pennington’s principal investigator.
“There has always been collaboration between institutions in the state; however, there are hurdles,” Cefalu says. “Basically, this eliminates the barriers, or attempts to reduce them.”
The grant, which comes from the National Institutes of Health’s Institutional Development Award Program, will be used to fund the Louisiana Clinical and Translational Science Center—or LA CaTS as it’s being called. It will be more of a figurative center than a physical one, Cefalu explains.
“Each institution and campus really has its own mission, its own committees, its own clinics and specialties,” he says. “So, everyone involved brings something to bear that is valuable at the center, and what this does is it brings them all together. Essentially, it facilitates research at institutions across the state to combat chronic diseases.”
Along with Pennington, the center will consist of the following partners: LSU, Baton Rouge campus; the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans; LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport; Tulane Health Sciences Center; the seven public hospitals of the LSU Health Care Services Division; Xavier University of Louisiana; and the Research Institution for Children at Children’s Hospital.
Cefalu says the center has been in the planning stages for five years, “and with the funding from the grant, the dream is essentially being realized.” The grant is a “game changer” for the state in creating a network of medical research partners that is unparalleled in the United States, Cefalu says.
“This is unique across the nation, as far as its size and scope,” he says. “I can say without any hesitation that there are no translation programs in the country that involve eight institutions such as this.”
Cefalu also notes the $20 million grant is believed to be among the largest—and is possibly the largest—that the LSU System has ever been awarded.
For more details on today’s grant announcement, click here.
