Research

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.

University of Vermont Assistant Professor of Medicine Timothy Plante, M.D., M.H.S., and colleagues say that a high “star rating” doesn’t necessarily reflect medical accuracy or value in a blood pressure app. Based on their latest study results, the researchers are concerned that unregulated mobile health app use could give people a false sense of security, which could lead to dire health consequences.

Yvonne Janssen-Heininger, Ph.D., professor of pathology at the University of Vermont's Larner College of Medicine, was inducted as one of three 2018-19 University Scholars at a ceremony held April 24, 2018 in Waterman's Memorial Lounge.