NHLBI Announces Four Program of Excellence in Nanotechnology Awards

July 2005 - The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), National Institutes of Health (NIH), has made four 5-year awards as part of its Program of Excellence in Nanotechnology. Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology will together receive $11.5 million to establish a new research program focused on creating advanced nanotechnologies to analyze plaque formation on the molecular level and detect plaque at its early stages. A partnership of 25 scientists from the Burnham Institute, UC Santa Barbara, and the Scripps Research Institute have been awarded $13.2 million to use nanotechnologies in the design of new ways to detect, monitor, treat, and eliminate "vulnerable" plaque, the probable cause of death from sudden cardiac arrest. Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University, along with collaborating institutions MIT, the Broad Institute, and Brigham Women's Hospital, have been awarded $15.6 million for a new center with the goal of developing and rapidly translating new nanotechnologies, including noninvasive imaging and sensing, targeted therapies, tissue repair and regeneration and drug delivery, to better diagnose and treat heart, lung, blood and sleep disorders. A partnership of scientists from Washington University in St. Louis, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Berkeley has been awarded $12.6 million to develop nanoscale agents to provide early diagnosis and treatment of acute pulmonary and systemic vascular injury.