Curing cancer and childhood disease indiana university
ANN UA L RE P O RT 2 0 1 5 -1 6 Office of the Vice President for Research
Annual Report Indiana University Vice President for Research
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“IU’s record amount of external funding to support research and other activities is all the more noteworthy in light of the increasingly competitive environment that has faced researchers across the country in recent years. Research funding has become more scarce— in fact, the funding rates of a number of federal programs have reached historic lows. At the same time, the demand for research funding has increased and now greatly exceeds the supply. IU has achieved record success in this highly competitive arena because the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and other funding agencies, as well as many foundations and endowments, recognize the quality of the research conducted at IU and the impact our faculty are making in improving our state, nation, and world. Research conducted at IU is transforming lives.” —IU President Michael A. McRobbie
Copyright © 2016 The Trustees of Indiana University Design: Kaye Lee Johnston Creative Photography courtesy of: Emily Beckman, IU Communications, IU School of Medicine, IU Jacobs School of Music, IU Northwest, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Nyama McCarthy-Brown, Ann Schertz, The Indianapolis Star
t has been an historic year for research at Indiana University. On June 20, 2016, IU President Michael McRobbie announced the first recipient of funding through IU’s Grand Challenges Program: the Precision Health Initiative (PHI). The Grand Challenges Program, adopted as part of the university’s Bicentennial Strategic Plan, represents a $300 million commitment to support university research, an investment unprecedented in IU’s nearly 200-year existence. In an increasingly complex and challenging world, we need our universities’ best minds to be bolder, and PHI is just that. Led by Anantha Shekhar, August M. Watanabe professor and executive associate dean of research at the IU School of Medicine, PHI aims to develop better prevention and treatment of human disease through a more precise definition of the genetic, developmental, behavioral, and environmental factors that contribute to an individual’s health. The PHI team’s goals are ambitious and clear: to cure at least one cancer, cure at least one pediatric disease, and to develop new, precision medicine-based methods for treating or preventing diseases, such as Alzheimer’s. And just two months after IU’s first Grand Challenges announcement, the university announced a record-making $614.1 million in external funding for research and sponsored
activities received during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2016. That figure represents the highest total of such funding for any public university in Indiana during the 2015-16 fiscal year, and it is the highest annual total in IU history. Yet another research milestone was reached by IU’s Research and Technology Corp., which protects, markets, and licenses intellectual property developed at IU so it can be commercialized by business and industry. During the 2015-16 fiscal year, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued 53 patents to IU researchers, another record for the university and a 29 percent increase over the previous year. While IU’s Grand Challenges Program is the university’s newest and grandest investment in its faculty’s work, it is hardly the only one. I invite you to learn more about some of IU’s
other signature funding programs and the outstanding faculty and projects they support in the pages that follow. IU’s research enterprise is alive with activity— new partnerships, new programs, new grant applications, new ways of thinking—all the product of exceptional researchers committed to serving the people of Indiana, the nation, and the world.
Fred H. Cate Vice President for Research Distinguished Professor C. Ben Dutton Professor of Law
Annual Report Indiana University Vice President for Research
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4-year-old patient; Scan date March 2016
P recisio n Health:
4-year-old patient; Scan date May 2016
Curing Cancer and Childhood Disease If you’re launching a new initiative to cure cancer, it’s imperative to start quickly. Lives depend on it. Anantha Shekhar, director of the new Indiana University Precision Health Initiative, says that’s what happened over summer 2016. Shekhar also serves as executive associate dean for research affairs at the IU School of Medicine and director of the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute. The $120 million Precision Health Initiative was announced in June as the first recipient of funds from IU’s Grand Challenges Program. It brings together the latest tools of biomedical research to transform health care in ways that account for all of the factors – genetic, environmental, behavioral, and more – that affect individual health. Since that announcement, the PHI team has set a first-year budget, reorganized research core services at the IU School of Medicine, and posted new job opportunities. A cell therapy
manufacturing facility – one designed to meet the Food and Drug Administration’s good manufacturing practices requirements for operations producing products for human use – is under construction. A key hire has been made: Carmel Egan, a veteran Eli Lilly and Co. executive, joined the IU School of Medicine as associate dean of research affairs, including the role of project lead for the Precision Health Initiative and COO of the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute. As for the initiative’s ambitious goal to cure one cancer, that cancer has been selected: multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells, which are immune system cells found mainly in the bone marrow. An estimated 30,000 new cases of the disease are diagnosed annually in the United States. Although treatments have improved, there is no cure. As with many cancers, multiple myeloma turns out not to be one disease, but a cancer with genetic
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(Upper left) Using the techniques of precision medicine, IU School of Medicine oncologist Bryan Schneider and others are reshaping the future for cancer patients through new treatments and therapies that are extending their lives. (Above) The promise of precision medicine is embodied in these abdominal CT scans of a 4-year-old patient suffering from a rare cancer. Analysis of the child’s tumors using precision medicine techniques led to treatment with a targeted drug. Within two months, the child’s tumors shrank significantly and fluid was reduced.
variations resulting in multiple subtypes. Decoding those genetic variations and linking them to drugs that are most likely to be effective is the process at the heart of new precision medicine cancer therapy programs at the IU Simon Cancer Center and Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health. At the Simon Cancer Center, Bryan Schneider, associate professor of medicine and Vera Bradley Investigator in oncology, says the potential of precision medicine has been demonstrated by a patient with advanced thyroid cancer whose case was put into remission after Schneider’s team identified two genetic markers that led to two previously untried therapies. At Riley, a new precision cancer therapy program opened in April 2016, led by Jamie Renbarger, associate professor and Nora Letzter Scholar in pediatrics. The patients are children whose cancers have resisted treatment, have returned, or are advanced and aggressive at the time of diagnosis. The numbers are small and relatively little time has passed, but of the children seen in the first six months, genetic sequencing of the tumors has given physicians new treatment options in 80 percent of the cases, Renbarger says. This includes the case of a 4-year-old child with a rare form of ovarian cancer, whose abdominal CT scans may be seen at left. Using a precision medicine approach, treatment resulted in reduction in the size of the child’s tumors in just two months’ time. PHI will also support the creation of new gene editing and sequencing cores at the IU School of Medicine, as well as a crosscampus Center for Chemical Biology and
Biotherapeutics, a Precision Health Data Commons, and a Precision Health Integration and Analytics Platform. Faculty from the IU Bloomington campus will be integral partners in the creation of the Center for Chemical Biology and Biotherapeutics. The center will integrate the precision medicine cohort with basic chemical sciences to drive discovery of mechanisms that underlie patient-specific diseases. Contributions from IU Bloomington faculty differentiate IU’s PHI from other precision medicine efforts around the United States. Experts in social and network sciences will examine ways that habits, family dynamics, and surroundings influence individual behavior, prevention, and treatment. The goal is to identify innovative, cost-effective strategies for personalized behavior change that work in tandem with individually tailored precision medicine therapies. IU Bloomington’s School of Informatics and Computing will also lend expertise to address the challenges of storing, securing, and analyzing immense medical data sets needed to hone new precision health approaches. To augment existing expertise, PHI leaders expect to hire a total of nearly 40 new, fulltime faculty members. The Fairbanks School of Public Health, Kelley School of Business, and the IU School of Nursing will also be involved. In short, a robust and talented team has hit the ground running to cure cancer and transform the health of Hoosiers and beyond. kmiragaya / Adobe Stock
Annual Report Indiana University Vice President for Research
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825
grants
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faculty
Patients walking on grounds of Central State Hospital. The Indianapolis Star, Wednesday, June 24, 1992. (Image used with the permission of The Indianapolis Star)
IU New Frontiers in Arts and Humanities When it comes to IU’s New Frontiers in Arts and Humanities program, figures tell the story about the university’s investment: more than 825 grants awarded to nearly 500 IU faculty members in the arts and humanities from all eight campuses. This remarkable program, instituted more than 10 years ago with a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc., has been renewed twice by President McRobbie, including most recently in 2015 with a third university investment of $5 million. Neil Goodman, a professor of fine arts at IU Northwest since 1979, is a master of public sculpture (see his “Split Second” at left). His 201516 New Frontiers funding is enabling him to develop models for what will become new monumental outdoor sculptures. Goodman’s public works include a massive wall relief at the Chicago McCormick Place South Pavilion and a permanent, large-scale bronze installation at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University. Another recently funded faculty member is Emily Beckman, an assistant clinical professor of medical humanities at IUPUI, whose New Frontiers project is shining a light on real patient experiences with mental health care. “Voices from Central State” focuses on what life was like in Central State, Indiana’s primary psychiatric institution, in 1886, in the 1940s, and in the year of the institution’s closure, 1994. Beckman’s project tells the story through theatrical performance, public readings, and an exhibit at the Indiana Medical History Museum that captures patients’ lives during closure of the hospital using content from patient and staff newsletters, administrative documents, photographs, and press coverage of controversies regarding the institution’s neglect and abuse of patients.
Annual Report Indiana University Vice President for Research
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Col·lab· o ·rate (verb): “to work jointly with others especially in an intellectual endeavor”
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IU Collaborative Research Grants The Indiana University Collaborative Research Grants (IUCRG) program, started in 2010, was formed explicitly to promote robust collaborations among IU faculty teams who, by sharing their intellectual endeavors, can reach new milestones. As one example, working with IU Bloomington and IU School of Medicine colleagues, researchers Brea Perry and Andrew Saykin are examining how biological changes affect the impact of social networks on the progress of dementia in older adults. About 1 in 9 American adults age 65 or older have Alzheimer’s, a figure that’s expected to triple by 2050. It’s commonly understood that positive social interactions seem to reduce the risk for dementia, slow cognitive decline, and improve the prognosis for someone with Alzheimer’s or other dementia. But how does the link between social engagement and cognitive decline work? Perry and Saykin are putting their IUCRG funding to work to find out. Perry is associate professor of sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences at IU Bloomington and an associate in the IU Network Science Institute. Saykin is the Raymond C. Beeler Professor of radiology at the IU School of Medicine, director of the Indiana Alzheimer Disease Center and the IU Center for Neuroimaging, and a scientific director for the IU Network Science Institute. With their unique combination of expertise in neuroscience and social network science, the team will increase our understanding of the links between biological and social processes as human brains age, with the goal of reducing the burden of Alzheimer’s and other age-related cognitive decline for us all.
MRI image of human brain fibers from the Indiana Alzheimer Disease Center.
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More Investments in Research Collaborations at Indiana University Here are just a few examples of additional research collaborations across IU campuses, schools, and departments in 2015-16:
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IU Bloomington has established the Emerging Areas of Research Program, a new internal funding program that will announce its first recipient in late 2016. Like IU’s university-wide Grand Challenges Program, Emerging Areas of Research encourages faculty to think big. Over the next five years, it will support individuals and teams who take fresh approaches to existing or growing areas of strength on the campus and advance these areas in quality, impact, and reputation. In the first round of the program, two dozen impressive final proposals were submitted. The Emerging Areas of Research program will provide up to $3 million in cash per selected project and help support up to three faculty positions in the given area of research. The Emerging Areas of Research program is funded and administered by the Office of the Vice Provost for Research.
With support through the IUPUI Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and in partnership with the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, IUPUI is the first university in the United States to be home to an innovative 3D bioprinter (at left) that uses a small robot to place spheres of cells on micro-needles, which then fuse together into tissue. This cutting-edge 3D bioprinter will enable IU faculty to carry out research on inner ear tissues, specialized nipple tissue for eventual use in breast reconstruction, blood vessels for vascular repair, and bone segments to replace ones missing due to injury or disease.
Motivated by observations of racial unrest in U.S. society and on university campuses, IU Bloomington assistant professors Selene Carter and Nyama McCarthy-Brown (pictured at right performing with her son) choreographed a unique dance work intended to confront and undo racism at personal, professional, and institutional levels. Both single mothers of sons, one a woman of color and one a woman with white privilege, these artists aimed to generate new perspectives on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Carter and McCarthy-Brown received funding from a New Frontiers Experimentation Fellowship, IU Bloomington’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Multicultural Affairs, and IU’s Office of the Vice President for Research.
The Transportation Active Safety Institute, or TASI, is the only academic research center in the country dedicated to transportation and vehicle active safety research (see TASI driving simulator at lower right, which uses a virtual highway to advance safety measures, devices, and protocols). TASI has received funding from the IUPUI Office of the Chancellor as well as support from the IUPUI Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research. “Active safety” is a label that covers many high-tech areas relating to reducing traffic fatalities either through vehicle technologies or incorporating research findings about drivers themselves into active safety systems, such as how will an autonomous vehicle know the difference between a bicycle and a light post, a pedestrian and a wheelchair, or a dog and a child?
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I n dia na Un iversity
National Academy Members 2015-2016 The work of IU faculty is recognized across the country and around the globe, drawing widespread acclaim. In the words of President McRobbie, “These honors reflect the quality of our faculty and their continued pursuit of Indiana University’s core mission of excellence in education and research, as they help transform lives and strengthen the Indiana economy.” American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows
Armin P. Moczek
Robert L. Goldstone Goldstone is the Class of 1969 Chancellor’s Professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Cognitive Science Program. His laboratory conducts psychological experiments on humans and develops computational models of the behavior observed with a goal of better understanding how people learn, interact, and organize with others.
William F. Carroll Jr. Carroll is a retired vice president at Occidental Chemical Corp. and past president and board chair, as well as current board member, of the American Chemical Society. As an adjunct professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences Department of Chemistry, he teaches graduate students and postdoctoral students how to prepare for their careers.
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Moczek, an internationally recognized expert on evolutionary developmental biology, is professor in the College of Arts and Sciences Department of Biology. Using insects as model systems, he focuses on a central question in biology: how does evolutionary innovation and diversification occur? Moczek and his colleagues have discovered, for example, genetic mechanisms that connect development to nutritional conditions, a phenomenon that biologists have long tried to explain. An advocate for science education and outreach, Moczek also co-directs the Jim Holland Summer Science Research Program, Jim Holland Summer Enrichment Program, and the Research Initiative in STEM Education at IU Bloomington, and develops K-12 science curricula in collaboration with the IU Bloomington School of Education and the WonderLab Museum of Science, Health and Technology in Bloomington, Indiana.
Richard R. Wilk Wilk is Distinguished Professor and Provost’s Professor of anthropology in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences Department of Anthropology. A scholar of sustainability, food, globalization, and the rights of native people, Wilk is author of four books, a textbook on economic anthropology, and 14 edited volumes. His research in Belize, the U.S., and West Africa has been supported by two Fulbright fellowships, the Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and other organizations, including IU.
National Academy of Medicine
National Academy of Sciences Jefferson Science Fellow
Richard DiMarchi
Michael Hamburger
DiMarchi is Distinguished Professor of chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences at IU Bloomington. An expert in peptide chemistry, biochemistry, and pharmacology, DiMarchi’s career spans academia, biotechnology, and the pharmaceutical industry. His current research focuses on developing large complex molecules with enhanced therapeutic properties. DiMarchi is the holder of more than 100 patents; co-founder of the IU-initiated Marcadia Biotech, purchased by Roche in 2010, and Calibrium LLC, purchased by Novo-Nordisk in 2015; and co-founder of the biotechnology companies Ambrx, Assembly Biosciences, and MB-2. Merck, Roche, and NovoNordisk are also independently advancing novel drug candidates inspired by DiMarchi’s discoveries in IU laboratories.
Hamburger is a professor in the College of Arts and Sciences Department of Geological Sciences at IU Bloomington. He studies the interactions between large-scale geological processes and human societies and is an expert on earthquakes, earthquake hazards, and volcanic activity. As a Jefferson Science Fellow, he spent the 2015-16 academic year in Washington, D.C., serving as a senior advisor in the State Department’s Office of Religion and Global Affairs. While there, he focused on climate change, global environmental issues, and natural disasters. In addition, Hamburger did a six-week appointment as an Embassy Science Fellow, working with USAID in Kathmandu, Nepal, focusing on post-earthquake reconstruction and geologic hazards. At IU, Hamburger also leads campus environmental and sustainability initiatives.
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Research Data SUMMARY OF SPONSORED PROGRAM ACTIVITY
SPONSORED PROGRAM AWARDS INDIANA UNIVERSITY FY 2012-16 Dollar figures given are in millions.
Total Amount of Proposals
$2,412,503,750
$700M
Total Amount of Awards
$600M
$614
$614,059,533 $541 $477
$452
$400M
$533
$500M
Proposals Submitted
4,057
Awards Received
2,936
$300M
$324
$393
1,736
$221
Noncompeting Renewals and Supplemental Awards $216
$184
$293
$298 $154
$100M
$209
$200M
$325
New and Competing Continuation Awards Received
Principal Investigators Receiving Awards
0 2012
2013
Federal
1,200
2014 Non-Federal
2015
2016
Total
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1,270 Sponsors
873
Indiana University Awards by Source: FY 2016 Federal Pass-thru*
10%
Commercial
12% Federal Direct
Foundations
6%
Other
36%
54%
Non-Profit
12% State of Indiana
4% Higher Ed. Other Gov.
* Federal pass-thru funding consists of federal funding received by a non-federal
>1%
entity (e.g., another university, state government, etc.) and subawarded to IU.
1%
TOP TEN SOURCES OF FEDERAL AND FEDERAL PASS -THRU AWARDS FY 2016 Federal Agency†
Direct Awards
Pass-thru Awards
Total
NIH
$180,325,345
$22,096,054
$202,421,399
NSF
$55,605,875
$8,561,955
$64,167,830
US DEPT OF DEFENSE
$26,746,634
$1,814,653
$28,561,287
DHHS-CMS
$14,657,920
$ 40,000
$ 14,697,920
US DEPT OF EDUCATION
$ 7,301,318
$ 3,987,253
$ 11,288,571
US DEPT OF ENERGY
$ 7,138,276
$ 3,320,712
$ 10,458,988
HRSA
$ 5,983,543
$ 862,171
$ 6,845,714
US DHHS
$ 474,678
$ 5,700,000
$ 6,174,678
US DEPT OF STATE
$ 4,655,402
$ 1,259,301
$ 5,914,703
USAID
$ 2,550,113
$ 2,692,500
$ 5,242,613
† awards are directly from the entity listed and do not include funding from subsidiary agencies, where applicable. Annual Report Indiana University Vice President for Research
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INDIANA UNIVERSITY Indiana University Office of the Vice President for Research Bryan Hall 300 107 S. Indiana Ave. Bloomington, IN 47405
The IU Northwest Sculpture Garden features art by Professor of Fine Arts Neil Goodman, whose work has been supported by the IU New Frontiers in Arts and Humanities program. 14 Annual Report Indiana University Vice President for Research
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