In a New Initiative, NIH Selects Center to Validate Breaking Research as It Becomes Available to Scientific Community

Irvine, Calif., March 4, 2003 -- The Reeve-Irvine Research Center at UC Irvine has been awarded a five-year, $2.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to confirm or refute new findings in spinal cord injury research.

The grant is the first time the NIH has issued funding strictly for the evaluation of key findings on spinal cord injury and regeneration of nerve cells as they are published or announced by respected sources.

Only two centers in the country have been awarded grants. The other center is the Miami Project to Prevent Paralysis at the University of Miami.

"This is an interesting approach, in which we will work to confirm discoveries as soon as they're reported," said Oswald Steward, director of the Reeve-Irvine center. "New results only become breakthrough treatments if they are confirmed independently by other scientists, and our laboratories can accelerate that process and help determine where tomorrow's treatments may lie."

This new role is regarded as a crucial step in speeding laboratory research into clinically useful treatments. Steward's team will focus on studies that report advances in promoting injured nerves to regenerate, as well as on research for enhancing the action of genes that either promote nerve cell growth or block other genes that code for growth-inhibiting molecules. The grant will also allow UCI researchers to develop new methods for tracking the use of experimental spinal cord injury treatments in animals.

The Reeve-Irvine center was established in 1996 with grants from the Athalie R. Clarke Foundation, actor Christopher Reeve and the American Paralysis Association. The center's researchers study the effects of spinal cord injury and spinal diseases in their efforts to find a cure for these disorders.