Research

On the fourth floor of the Given Building at the Larner College of Medicine, Adam Atherly, Ph.D., surveys the space outside of his newly-painted office. Two adjacent doors open into rooms with empty desks. A common area includes space for a few more cubicles with top-notch views of the Green Mountains. In one corner, a coat rack hangs on otherwise empty walls. Outside the glass door, a sign reads: UVM Center for Health Services Research. Although the offices may be a work-in-progress, the mission for the new center is clear: Foster cutting-edge research that improves the delivery of healthcare, leading to better population health in Vermont and across the country.

University of Vermont biomedical scientists Mary Cushman, M.D., M.Sc., Richard Page, M.D., and Russell Tracy, Ph.D., are among the most Highly Cited Researchers in 2018, according to a recently-released report compiled by Clarivate Analytics.

The NIH announced December 3, 2018 that enrollment for the landmark Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study is now complete and, in early 2019, scientists will have access to baseline data from all ABCD Study participants. There are over 11,874 youth, ages 9-10, participating in the study at 21 research sites around the country, including the University of Vermont (UVM).

Leaders at the University of Vermont and Larner College of Medicine announced $12.3 million in funding for a new Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) called the “Translational Global Infectious Disease Research Center” (TGIR) that will join together two traditionally distinct groups of scientists to develop innovative approaches to prevent and control infectious disease.

An innovative initiative that will use a public health approach to inform opioid prescribing policies will be launched in northern New England thanks to a new $339,000 grant to the Northern New England Clinical and Translational Research (NNE-CTR) Network from the National Institutes of Health.

An $11.7 million Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) grant renewal to the Vermont Center on Behavior and Health (VCBH) at the University of Vermont will support another five years of research on addressing and better understanding the unhealthy behaviors that negatively impact health and cost the U.S. healthcare system billions of dollars.

Three innovative projects spanning the fields of regenerative medicine, electrophysiology, and infectious diseases were selected to receive SPARK-VT research funding following a June 22 proposal presentation meeting at which University of Vermont faculty applicants pitched ideas to a panel of consultants from the biomedical and biotech arena. The awardees include UVM Larner College of Medicine Department of Medicine faculty members Daniel Weiss, M.D., Ph.D., Jason Botten, Ph.D., and Peter Spector, M.D.

Although malnutrition is a serious concern associated with adverse outcomes and cost, no single existing approach to malnutrition diagnosis has achieved broad global acceptance. Now, thanks to more than two years’ work by members of the Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition (GLIM) working group, a consensus report, which outlines five criteria for malnutrition, has just been published in the latest issue of both the Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition and Clinical Nutrition.

UVM Assistant Professor of Surgery Thomas Ahern, Ph.D., is the recipient of one of 76 St. Baldrick's Foundation grants totaling more than $19.1 million to support studying innovative treatment options in the pediatric cancer space.

New translational research led by UVM Professor Yvonne Janssen-Heininger, Ph.D., demonstrates a novel biological therapeutic candidate for regressing pulmonary fibrosis in a difficult-to-treat preclinical model of the disease, providing much-needed hope for the roughly 150,000 Americans suffering from this devastating condition.