{"id":28125,"date":"2016-01-28T13:27:35","date_gmt":"2016-01-28T18:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/busm\/?p=28125"},"modified":"2016-02-01T13:08:31","modified_gmt":"2016-02-01T18:08:31","slug":"bu-research-benefits-from-first-federal-funding-boost-in-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/2016\/01\/28\/bu-research-benefits-from-first-federal-funding-boost-in-years\/","title":{"rendered":"BU Research Benefits from First Federal Funding Boost in Years"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Stalled projects advance under last month\u2019s budget agreement<\/h4>\n
\"Alzheimer\u2019s
Alzheimer\u2019s researcher Ben Wolozin has a new hypothesis that he\u2019ll study with the help of a welcome infusion of federal money. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Christmas may have fallen on December 25 last year, but it came a week earlier for Ben Wolozin, when Congress passed its 2016 spending plan<\/a>. The School of Medicine pharmacology professor had feared\u00a0that he\u2019d retire<\/a> before Uncle Sam increased research funding, sucker-punched in recent years by sequestration<\/a>\u00a0and recession-induced belt-tightening. Instead, the bill boosted federal support across agencies and bulldozed roadblocks to certain types of research.<\/p>\n

The new budget, coupled with an unexpected infusion of federal funds last summer, means \u201cfunding for research on Alzheimer\u2019s disease has almost doubled in the past six months, from $448 million to $936 million, which is amazing, and at least to me, unexpected,\u201d marvels Wolozin, who heads BU\u2019s Laboratory of Neurodegeneration<\/a>, which researches Alzheimer\u2019s, Parkinson\u2019s disease, and Lou Gehrig\u2019s disease. The timing was fortuitous, given a new hypothesis from his lab: that Alzheimer\u2019s brain-crippling effects stem from tau protein the organ accumulates to defend against the disease, but which then becomes dysfunctional.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a result of this funding, we are well on our way to identifying the mechanisms underlying this process,\u201d Wolozin says, which would lead to \u201cpowerful new targets for drug discovery.\u201d New federal money will be \u201cwind in the sails\u201d as well for BU colleagues researching Alzheimer\u2019s and for costly clinical drug trials, he says. \u201cThere is a strong sense in the field that we can stop Alzheimer\u2019s disease; Congress appears to agree.\u201d<\/p>\n

It agreed, in part, because BU officials across the academic disciplines joined colleagues nationally to lobby for federal research funding. Washington listened, as a rundown of some of the winners<\/a>\u00a0under the spending plan shows:<\/p>\n