UAMS Center for Osteoporosis and Metabolic Bone Diseases Earns Prestigious $8 Million Grant Renewal
| May 15, 2012 | The Center for Osteoporosis and Metabolic Bone Diseases of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) has received a five-year competitive award of $8 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), extending the center’s largest NIH research grant to 20 years and a total funding of $33 million.
The goal of the research supported by the grant is to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms that cause osteoporosis in postmenopausal women, and men and women with old age as well as patients developing osteoporosis as a side-effect of therapy with steroids.
“This is one of the largest and longest funded multi-component research grants in the history of UAMS,” said Stavros C. Manolagas, M.D., Ph.D., principal investigator of the grant and director of the Center for Osteoporosis and Metabolic Bone Diseases.
More than 10 million Americans have osteoporosis and another 34 million have low bone mass that puts them at risk for developing the disease that weakens bones and causes fractures. Using an understanding of the mechanisms responsible for the development of osteoporosis, the investigators of the center are developing more effective therapies for treatment of this common metabolic bone disease.
Since its establishment in 1994, the Center for Osteoporosis and Metabolic Bone Diseases has brought to UAMS nearly $70 million in extramural research grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Veterans Administration, and the pharmaceutical industry.
The center’s faculty members have more than 1,200 publications. Their expertise includes molecular and cellular biology, molecular genetics, biology of bone as a tissue and the clinical diagnosis and treatment of osteoporosis. |