Friday Focus: Putting U in UAF — biomedical research
August 6, 2020
— by Nettie La Belle-Hamer, interim vice chancellor for research
Never has the concept of One Health been more on the forefront of our minds than now, in the middle of a history-changing pandemic. If you stop and reflect on how we got here, in this self-quarantine, shelter-in-place world we are living in, it is rooted in two modern constructs of the global community: 1) a vastly mobile human population and 2) interconnection between human health, animal health, and ecosystem health. The first is a modern construct, with transatlantic flights alone numbering over 1,700 times a day in 2018 href="https://www.eurocontrol.int/news/celebrating-100-years-transatlantic-flights">Eurocontrol. People not only travel more than ever before in industrialized nations, but it is far more common for people to move their families more often and farther than in the past. The second has been the focus for UAF’s biomedical researchers for over 20 years.
Featured in the photo are some members of UAF’s biomedical research team. Together, they represent the synergistic group of researchers that spans the institutes and colleges of UAF, and includes many researchers from our sister campuses and beyond. The National Institutes of Health defines One Health as the integrative effort of multiple disciplines working together to attain optimal health for people, animals and the environment. Dr. Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) first linked human and animal health and coined the term zoonosis href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2603088/">Virchow. Yet it wasn't until 2006 that NIH founded the One Health Initiative.
NIH is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, investing more than $32 billion a year to enhance life, and reduce illness and disability. NIH’s Division for Research Capacity Building supports research, faculty development, research training, and research infrastructure improvements in states where levels of NIH research funding have historically been low through administering the Institutional Development Award, or IDeA. The program aims to strengthen an institution’s ability to support biomedical research, enhance the competitiveness of investigators in securing research funding, and enable clinical and translational research that addresses the needs of medically underserved communities.
Alaska is an IDeA state. What does that mean for you here at UAF? It means opportunity. Here are some of the programs you can get involved with while here at UAF.
The Alaska INBRE (IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence) program at the University of Alaska, led by Brian Barnes, is funded by NIH's National Institute of General Medical Sciences. Alaska INBRE strives to enhance the biomedical research infrastructure of Alaska as well as further Alaska-specific health concerns to better serve Alaska and the nation through excellence in biomedical research, training, and education. It focuses on the interface of health and disease as impacted by environment and behavior, an aspect of the broader One Health worldwide initiative. Alaska INBRE is supported by the UAF Institute of Arctic Biology.
The Center for Alaska Native Health Research, led by Stacy Rasmus, embraces a collaborative research model while working with Alaska Native communities, organizations, and individuals. CANHR was originally founded by a Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence grant, one of the five main components of the IDeA program. At every stage of CANHR research, faculty and staff work with tribal groups and health care agencies to frame research questions, develop methodologies and procedures, and to interpret and apply data to prevention and treatment. CANHR is supported by the UAF Institute of Arctic Biology and the UAF College of Rural and Community Development.
UA’s Transformative Research in Metabolism, led by Kelly Drew, is the newest of the capacity-building grants awarded to UAF. Translating hibernation research to improve human health, Drew was awarded this COBRE grant in 2019 and has already begun the work of building a new center based on her years of experience in the field. TRiM is supported by UAF’s Institute of Arctic Biology.
But, wait! There’s more! In addition to the IDeA opportunities at UAF, NIH’s Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity initiative funds the Biomedical Learning and Student Training program, led by Dr. Arleigh Reynolds, Karsten Hueffer, and Mike Castellini. BLaST offers undergraduate research training designed to engage diverse learners of all educational backgrounds — especially students from rural Alaska. The BLaST program offers opportunities to pursue biomedical research that can positively impact your community. BLaST is supported by UAF’s College of Natural Science and Mathematics.
The Center for One Health Research, led by Reynolds, seeks to improve UAF’s research capacity and more effectively promote well-being in the North. It is focused on building teams to create research, education, and outreach programs around One Health and create long-term funding opportunities through collaboration. The Center for One Health Research is supported by UAF’s Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research.
Interested? Intrigued? Reach out and get involved. UAF is the research university of Alaska and needs you to be part of the team. Biomedical research is a powerful way for us to put YOU in UAF.
Friday Focus is a column written by a different member of UAF’s leadership team every week. On occasion, a guest writer is asked to contribute a column.