FSU research almost record year

Thanks to @TDOnline for letting me write about our record-breaking year — $233.6M in research funding — and the positive economic benefits that brings to our area. https://t.co/Phzs5b6uZV

— Gary K. Ostrander (@FSU_VP_Research) July 22, 2019

https://www.tallahassee.com/story/opinion/2019/07/22/fsu-vp-growth-florida-state-research-benefits-region-state/1771148001/

This past fiscal year, Florida State University researchers attracted $233.6 million in research funding from federal, state and private sources. This includes money to research cardiovascular disease, climate change, the local oyster population and so much more.

Over the past few years, FSU has consistently been among the top patent producers in the world, according to the National Academy of Inventors and Intellectual Property Owners Association. This past year, we ranked No. 69 among all universities in the world for the number of patents granted, up from No. 79 the year prior.

What’s even more valuable is when we can turn these patents into viable business opportunities through licensing agreements or startup companies. In the past few years, the university has licensed about 10 new technologies per year to companies.

One of these technologies is a next-generation foam developed by Chad Zeng, a researcher at FSU’s High-Performance Materials Institute. The foam was the product of a two-year project funded by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which was interested in creating more comfortable prosthetics. It also turned out to have some commercial applications because it has the novel property of expanding on impact.

This foam was licensed by a Florida-based company called Auxadyne, which has been using the foam to make safer athletic equipment, including better football helmets. The company was recently recognized by the National Football League’s health and safety initiative.

Another example is the work conducted by Professor Michael Blaber at the FSU College of Medicine. Blaber, with the help of funding from the National Institutes of Health, has developed an artificial human protein for stimulating cell growth that could help provide relief for an incurable eye condition called Fuchs’ Dystrophy. This technology has been licensed by Trefoil Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company that has attracted significant investment from venture capitalist firms and recently received $28 million from investors.

We have extraordinary researchers at FSU working on so many different types of projects, and we are beginning to see the fruits of their labors reflected in the federal, state and private grants received this past fiscal year. But that is only the start of their stories here at FSU.

In the next few years, we will see what they will develop to help solve questions in health, technology, the environment and other areas. And we will also see how those innovations can make a dent in the marketplace, bringing greater benefits to the Big Bend Region and the state of Florida.

Gary Ostrander is the vice-president for research for Florida State University.

https://news.fsu.edu/news/2019/07/16/researchers-awarded-233-6-million-breaking-fsus-single-year-funding-record/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the_big_story_july_22_2019&utm_term=2019-07-22

Florida State University researchers received a record level of funding from federal, state and private sources in the 2019 fiscal year, bringing in $233.6 million to the university to support investigations into areas such as health sciences, high energy physics and marine biology.

This is a $7 million increase over the prior fiscal year.

The university is also one of the state’s leaders in funding from the National Institutes of Health. FSU ranks fifth in the state for NIH dollars, ahead of research heavyweights such as the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville. These dollars support traditional biomedical research into diseases and conditions such as stroke, the flu and cancer, in addition to behavioral health issues and neurological disorders such as learning disabilities.

https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2019/07/16/research-funding-florida-state-university-brings-record-233-million/1744620001/

FSU’s record year of funding 2014 when researchers brought in $230.1 million. However, that total was boosted by federal stimulus dollars that had to be used during a certain period.

https://news.fsu.edu/news/science-technology/2019/07/18/3-3-million-nih-grant-to-fund-maglab-research/

With a new grant from the National Institutes of Health, researchers at the Florida State University-headquartered National High Magnetic Field Laboratory will study the main mechanism behind one of the top causes of disability: migraines.

The $3.3 million, five-year grant continues a collaboration that includes Sam Grant, a MagLab researcher and associate professor in the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering. Grant is partnering with Dr. Michael Harrington, director of neurosciences at Huntington Medical Research Institute (HMRI) in Pasadena, California, and Linda Petzold, a professor of computer science and mechanical engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).

Using the MagLab’s world-record MRI machine, the team has been working for years to shed light on why migraines occur and how they propagate to different brain areas, which is still not well understood.

However, the researchers have identified a likely suspect — sodium — and have been building a case for the role it plays in these painful episodes. In research published earlier this year, for example, they described how sodium distribution in the brain is disturbed in mammals even before symptoms of an oncoming migraine begin. They also described how those sodium increases can be blocked.

“If we can discover a way to treat it by correcting these sodium-led changes, it offers a lot of hope,” said Nastaren Abad, a co-author of the paper and a doctoral student in biomedical engineering at FSU who will be part of the new project.

Different stimuli can trigger migraines, depending on the patient. But no matter what origins, the team believes the process may unfold in the same way. Specifically, their research points to a sodium imbalance that begins in an area of the brain called the choroid plexus and is spread via the cerebrospinal fluid.

The NIH grant will allow the team to better understand what happens along that pathway and in turn develop more effective strategies to treat migraines.

Interrupting this pathway could prevent or mitigate migraines, Grant said. The team plans to test sodium pump blockers, which have been effective in previous studies, and compare their performance to both common and experimental migraine drugs.

Each institution is contributing in a unique way, according to Grant. The HMRI team is conducting behavioral and tissue studies using animal models; the UCSB group is developing computer models of sodium transport in the brain; and at the MagLab, Grant’s team is running high-field sodium magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and metabolic spectroscopy experiments.

By combining these methods, they hope to fully understand how migraines become ingrained through sodium.