The West Virginia University School of Pharmacy will soon join the elite institutions championing biomedical research excellence. With a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the School is committed to groundbreaking interdisciplinary research, targeting, diagnosing and treating health issues. Dr. Paul Lockman, professor and chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and the School’s senior associate dean of research, will lead the efforts as the principal investigator. Additionally, Dr. Lockman is the assistant vice president of Neuro-experimental Therapeutics.
NIH awarded WVU an additional $11.2 million to make the total Federal award from 2018-2028 over $22 million. These monies for the Center of Excellence will help WVU School of Pharmacy, School of Medicine and Cancer Institute researchers work together to investigate how tumors interact with hosts and potential treatments that attack them. The team hopes to develop new probes for tumor diagnosis and identify better ways to prevent and treat melanoma, pancreatic and bladder cancers. Additionally, it will focus on improving treatments for leukemia, as well as other blood cancers. “We hope this work will significantly impact the treatment of cancer in West Virginia and beyond,” said Lockman.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in four deaths in the United States is due to cancer. As of 2021, West Virginia had the highest cancer death rate in the nation. Dr. William Petros, dean of the WVU School of Pharmacy, commented, “This prestigious support from the NIH is a reflection of Dr. Lockman’s past efforts to successfully mentor faculty to become established, nationally competitive cancer researchers and will lead toward continuing the battle against a disease with enormous impact in our State and region.”
Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number 2P20GM121322-06. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
