UAMS Center for Osteoporosis and Metabolic Bone Diseases Earns Prestigious $8 Million Grant Renewal

By Nate Hinkel

 The Center for Osteoporosis and Metabolic Bone Diseases, headed by Stavros Manolagas, M.D., Ph.D., has received a five-year award of $8 million from the National Institutes of Health. 

The Center for Osteoporosis and Metabolic Bone Diseases, headed by Stavros Manolagas, M.D., Ph.D., has received a five-year award of $8 million from the National Institutes of Health.

 

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.

“In fact, this is the longest one of only three other such grants funded by the Division of Aging Biology of the National Institute on Aging in the area of bone and mineral metabolism nationally,” said Manolagas, a professor of medicine who holds the Thomas E. Andreoli, M.D., M.A.C.P., Clinical Scholar Chair in Internal Medicine in the UAMS College of Medicine.

 

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.