Multiple faculty at School of Medicine & Health Sciences receive research awards

Several faculty at the UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences (SMHS) have been awarded research grants recently totaling more than $2.5 million to be devoted to a variety of years-long research projects at the School.

• Min Wu, professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, recently received the first-year installment ($347,500) of a four-year, $1.75 million grant from the Department of Health and Human Services and National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a project titled “Long noncoding RNAs interact with miRNAs to Regulate Inflammatory response.”
• Mikhail Golovko, associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, received the first-year installment ($208,500) on a two-year $382,000 grant from the Department of Health and Human Services and NIH for a project titled “Neuronal-specific Fatty Acid Synthesis Activation as Protective Mechanism under Hypoxia.”
• Lynette Dickson, associate director of the UND Center for Rural Health, and Shawnda Schroeder, assistant professor at the Center, have received a one-year, $200,000 grant from the federal Department of Health and Human Services for a project titled “Rural communities Opioid Response (Planning).”
• Alexei Tulin, professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, received a two-year cancer research award worth $100,000 from the Mary Kay Foundation for a project titled “New class of Non-NAD-like PARP-1 inhibitors: an effective strategy targeting drug-resistant breast cancer.”
• Jacqueline Quisno, assistant professor at the UND Center for Family Medicine in Bismarck, has received a seven-month, $74,000 award from the North Dakota Department of Health to complete a project titled “Title X Family Planning Program (FY19).”
• Jonathan Geiger, Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Sciences, received a four-year, $2.25 million grant from the NIH for ““Ketogenic Diet and Adenosine: Epigenetics and Antiepileptogenesis.”

On average, the UND School of Medicine & Health Sciences conducts over $25 million in research activity annually; most research grants are funded by the NIH, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Science Foundation, and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, among other organizations. Research specialties at the SMHS include epigenetics, neuroscience, infectious disease, and population health disparities.