UNC Neuroscience Center $3.35 million grant to support imaging approaches in research

By LESLIE H. LANG
UNC School of Medicine

CHAPEL HILL -- The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Neuroscience Center has received a $3.35 million federal grant to support molecular, genetic and high-resolution imaging approaches to neuroscience research.

The five-year institutional center grant was awarded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, or NINDS, the nation’s leading supporter of biomedical research on disorders of the brain and nervous system.

Last year, NINDS decided for the first time to fund a series of center grants to support state-of-the-art technology that otherwise would be difficult for individual grantees to access, said Dr. William D. Snider, UNC Neuroscience Center director and professor of neurology and cell and molecular physiology at UNC’s School of Medicine.

"We received the award in the first cycle of stiff national competition for these grants," he said.

The new grant will support five research cores, which will be housed in the Neuroscience Research Building. Four cores will be related to genetic approaches: gene discovery, methods of creating new mouse strains, embryonic stem cells, and multiphoton and confocal microscopy. An administrative core also will be included. Snider is principal investigator.

"The core grant allows us to bring in funds to keep these facilities state of the art, to buy ancillary equipment, hire technical assistance to keep the equipment maximally operational, to pay the service contracts on the equipment and to fund other ongoing expenses that are associated with the core facility," Snider said.

"The cores will support 13 NINDS grantees, who span the gamut from the medical school to the undergraduate campus, including several departments," Snider said. "It is very helpful for us to integrate our mission, to have core resources around which people can congregate and form ongoing collaborations.

The UNC Neuroscience Center is an inter-departmental research center of UNC’s School of Medicine. Its mission is to promote neuroscience research with a specific emphasis on developmental, cellular and disease-related processes.

The center houses laboratories for its scientists on two floors of the Neuroscience Research Building dedicated October 2001. The building also houses neuroscience research groups in both basic (cell and molecular physiology) and clinical (neurology) departments.

The neuroscience research effort is part of a campuswide genomics initiative announced in 2001 that represents a public-private investment of at least $245 million over the next 10 years.

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Note: Contact Snider at (919) 843-8623 or william_snider@med.unc.edu.

School of Medicine contact: Les Lang, (919) 843-9687 or llang@med.unc.edu