A new UMR report documents how Recovery Act funding of medical research through the NIH is creating and preserving jobs, laying the foundation for industry growth, and helping to reduce long-term health care costs. Investing in Recovery and Discovery illustrates these benefits through real-life stories of research scientists and their Recovery Act-funded work.

According to Dr. Steve Fluharty, Vice Provost for Research at the University of Pennsylvania, “the impact of NIH funding goes beyond the lab and into the companies that supply many of the 325,000 NIH-funded researchers across the country with the tools, technology and resources they need. Further, NIH grantees generate many of the discoveries the nation’s most significant employers – the biotech and pharmaceutical industries – build upon to create the next generation of treatments and cures.”

At the same time the funding is forging new areas of science, many of which could not have been pursued just 10 years ago, and others which could have been neglected without ARRA.  “We now have the unique opportunity to explore exciting new fields of science that may fundamentally impact our understanding of diseases, and help to tailor treatments with more precision to address the unique needs of very different patients,”says Dr. Clyde Yancy, President of the American Heart Association. “The ARRA infusion was more than a stimulus; it has been a catalyst that now provides the opportunity to jumpstart the pace of scientific discovery and ultimately to effect major advances in the quality of health for the American population.”

To learn more about how NIH funding through the Recovery Act is at work across the country in the service of better health and a healthier economy, visit here.  And to read and download the full report, visit here.

In Time magazine’s cover story this week, John Cloud explores the potential of epigenetics.

The article highlights the past and current biomedical research projects pushing this important issue in biology forward, and concludes with the statement that “the age of epigenetics has arrived.”

Researchers in the epigenetics field study changes in gene activity that get passed down to at least one successive generation but are not associated with DNA. They investigate how lifestyle and the environment change the way our genes are expressed, and how the medical community might be able to use these facts to its fight disease.

Included in the article, Cloud cites breakthrough research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that has provided the foundation for additional research in the field.  In September 2008, the NIH launched a five-year epigenomics initiative entitled the Roadmap Epigenomics Program to conduct research on how epigenetic processes could lead to more effective ways to prevent and treat disease.

Thanks to the funding and the foundation of research on epigenetics, Researchers at the Southern California’s Salk Institute are performing cutting-edge research to help the cause.  And in October 2009, Salk researchers announced the first mapping of the human epigenome.

According to Linda Birnham at NIH, this research and subsequent paper “will help us better understand how a diseased cell differs from a normal cell, which will enhance our understanding of the pathways of the various diseases.”

Important epigenetics research continues around the country in this field.  For a full list of funded research projects, visit here.

According to eScience Commons,  Emory University researchers are tapping the latest-generation DNA sequencing technology to become the first explorers of the genomics of agricultural ant societies:

“This project is one of the first attempts to use genomics to understand a complex interacting system, rather than a single organism,” says Nicole Gerardo, assistant professor of biology and lead investigator of the project.

“If we can understand how these ants have evolved to process huge amounts of organic material over 50 million years, we might discover more efficient ways to process our own waste materials, produce bio-fuels, or improve our agricultural methods.”