NIH's $42M in EUREKA Awards Backs 'Omics, Biomedical Resarch

[Source: By a GenomeWeb staff reporter , GenomeWeb News] - Nearly 40 biomedical and biotech researchers have been awarded a total of roughly $42 million under the National Institutes of Health’s EUREKA program, which seeks to fund “innovative” research that could have an “extraordinarily significant impact” on science, NIH said today.

The Exceptional, Unconventional Research Enabling Knowledge Acceleration (EUREKA) program grants funds to scientists who are seeking novel hypotheses that “tackle major methodological or technical challenges,” and this round includes genomics, proteomics, and mRNA studies, among others.

"EUREKA projects promise remarkable outcomes that could revolutionize science," NIH Director Elias Zerhouni said in a statement. He said EUREKA “reflects NIH’s commitment to supporting potentially transformative research, even if it carries a greater than usual degree of scientific risk."

Researchers landing funding under this EUREKA program announcement will receive around $200,000 per year for up to four years, depending on the availability of funds.

This round of NIH EUREKA funding will be administered under the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, The National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

"EUREKA is an experiment in how to attract, identify, and support particularly creative approaches that, if successful, could move science forward dramatically," NIGMS Director Jeremy Berg said in a statement. “One way EUREKA does this is through a specialized application and review process focusing on the significance and innovation of the proposal.”

Awardees receiving funding under NIGMS include:
John Chaput, Arizona State University, Tempe, "Discovering a Hidden Proteome in the Human Genome";
Daniel Chiu, University of Washington, "Super-Resolution Imaging with Difference Deconvolution Microscopy";
Laurence Hurley, University of Arizona, Tucson, "Establishing a Molecular System for Drug Targeting of Transcriptional Control";
Masayori Inouye, University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey/Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, "The Method for Determination of Membrane Protein Structures Without Purification";
Lee Makowski, University of Chicago, "MADMAX: Precise Measurement of Conformational Changes in Proteins";
William Moerner, Stanford University, "Three-Dimensional Super-Resolution Imaging in Living Cells Using Single-Molecule Active Control";
John Sedat, University of California, San Francisco, "Enabling High-Resolution Imaging Deep in Live Tissue with Adaptive Optics";
Charles Stebbins, Rockefeller University, "Exploiting a Bacterial Nano-Syringe for Protein Therapeutics";
Brian Strahl, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, "A High-Throughput Approach Towards Deciphering the Histone Code"; and
Michael Stowell, University of Colorado at Boulder, "Self Assembled Lipid Icosohedra for High-Throughput Membrane Protein Structure Determination."
The National Institute of Mental Health is funding programs including:
Todd Lencz, Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, "Identifying Molecular Subtypes of Schizophrenia: A Novel Genomic Approach";
Andras Jagy and Hongkui Zeng, Allen Institute for Brain Science, "Generation and Characterization of Novel and Highly Specific Neuronal Subtype TRA"; and
Yi Eve Sun, University of California, Los Angeles, "A Novel Approach to Identify Neuronal mRNA Targets for Individual microRNAs."
The National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke is funding research by Beverly Davidson, University of Iowa, “RNA Aptamers for Brain Delivery.”

More information about the EUREKA program is available here.