UAB Synopsis, Vol. 25, No. 29, November 13, 2006

UAB Designated Neuroscience Blueprint Center Core Facility
An $8.6 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) Blueprint for Neuroscience grant — 1 of only 4 awarded — will bolster plans to create a Comprehensive Neuroscience Center modeled on UAB’s flagship Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The Blueprint for Neuroscience Research is a collaborative effort among NIH institutes and centers that support research on neurological and psychiatric diseases to promote interdisciplinary research and accelerate neuroscience discovery.

Neurological and psychiatric diseases encompass physically and emotionally devastating illnesses such as schizophrenia, depression, brain and spinal cord injury, epilepsy, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, autism — even drug addiction. With the growing significance of neuroscience investigation, UAB is committed to expanding programs and facilities for research into neurological and psychiatric diseases and to translating that research into prevention and treatment strategies.

“This is a truly collaborative effort, crossing institutional lines and synergizing activities across many disciplines,” says Kevin A. Roth, MD, PhD, professor of pathology and director of the Division of Neuropathology and the Comprehensive Neuroscience Center.

The grant, awarded over 5 years, provides funding for new laboratory equipment and expansion of research services and lab support through 6 core facilities: molecular engineering, cellular and molecular neuropathology, neuroimaging, in vivo physiology and phenotyping, cellular and synaptic physiology, and administration.

“The center’s core facilities will provide investigators new research tools to enhance our understanding of the nervous system. This in turn should help speed development of new drugs and therapies for a wide range of neurologic and psychiatric conditions and diseases,” Dr. Roth says. For details about the cores, go to www.alneurosciencecenter.uab.edu.

The new Shelby Building will house half of the cores, and disease-oriented research labs will be located in recently renovated laboratories in the Sparks and Civitan buildings. “These new facilities will encourage investigators from multiple scientific disciplines to work together and develop programmatic areas of neuroscience excellence,” says Dr. Roth.

As a Neuroscience Blueprint Center Core, UAB will support the research activities of other NIH Blueprint-funded investigators in the state, including those at Auburn University, the University of Alabama, and the University of South Alabama, as well as researchers at Southern Research Institute and Tulane University.

Limited services started in October, and Dr. Roth expects all the cores to be fully operational in early 2007. Future plans include creation or expansion of research programs for a broad spectrum of neurological and psychiatric diseases.