Scientists at the Maine Medical Center Research Institute in Scarborough are planning a major expansion during the next five years. funded in part by a $10 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.
Earlier this fall the facility received its second Center of Biomedical Research Excellence grant from the NIH, which will allow the institute to hire more staff and study a broader range of topics than it does now.
The initial grant was received in 2000 and totaled $10.6 million and was used to study a then-new field of angiogenesis, the process by which new blood vessels grow. The newest $10.7 million grant will continue with that field of study, but also will expand it to include blood vessels’ normal function and dysfunction in human disease.
The grant’s lead researcher is Robert Friesel, Ph. D., the institute’s scientific director, who said the new grant will allow the study of how blood vessels respond to injuries and the role inflammation plays in vascular diseases.
“Our goal is to increase knowledge of vascular biology and vascular disease,” Friesel said.
The grant also will allow the center to hire two more senior scientists, and about 12 staff members to help each one with research. There are now 15 principal investigators on staff and a total of 140 people employed at the institute, many in positions requiring less skill or education than is required of lead researchers.
The institute expects to double in size over the next five years, using the federal money, as well as some of the money state voters approved in November for biomedical research. The institute’s share of the funding has not yet been determined.
Some of the expansion will be dedicated to clinical and translational research. Translational research deals with taking ideas discovered in a laboratory and making them useful to help people. Clinical research is preliminary medical testing on humans. These two areas are the final stages of study necessary before a treatment can be more widely used.
Still Ault said the institute leaders do not want to expand the facility too quickly or it may lose the small, collaborative that leaders want to preserve.
The federally funded study could lead to greater understanding of many human ailments including coronary artery disease, stroke, and the vascular complications of diabetes.
It also will help scientists to better understand how blood vessels feed tumors and what can be done to slow their growth. Friesel said the main reason for expanding the scope of research subjects at MMCRI is because the center’s scientists felt angiogenesis was too narrow a study area.
It is unusual to receive a second COBRE grant, but Friesel pointed to the unique work being conducted at the facility as one reason why it was selected for the honor.
Maine Med researchers made a number of breakthroughs in biology and the study of living organisms, a pattern that is expected to continue into the future. They are not alone: Worldwide knowledge regarding biology is increasing.
“We have almost an explosion of basic knowledge of biology,” said institute Director Ken Ault. “What we know about life is increasing exponentially.”
In part that is because biomedical research is well funded and benefits people directly, Ault said, adding that there is great enthusiasm at both Maine Med and statewide for further biomedical research.
At this point MMCRI is the second-largest biomedical research organization in the state behind Jackson Laboratory on Mount Desert Island. Maine Med has a lot to offer scientists and many pieces of equipment are the only ones of their kind in the state, and are available to scientists from around the state, Ault said.
Ault routinely hears from cutting-edge scientists who are willing to move here, but the institute lacked what they need to conduct their research. “Now we have a lot of the facilities they will need,” he said.
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