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UTHSC PROFESSOR TIGYI RECEIVES THIRD NIH GRANT

Five UT Academic Medicine Professors Achieve Rare Distinction

           

Memphis, Tennessee (September 7, 2005) – Gabor Tigyi, MD, PhD, professor of physiology at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC), was recently awarded his third National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant. 

The nearly $1.5 million four-year grant, awarded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, will focus on the earliest events in the process of atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). “Our goal is to identify compounds that impede the buildup of cell growth on the walls of arteries so that atherosclerosis can ultimately be prevented,” explained Dr. Tigyi.

“NIH grants are the gold standard of medical research,” said Mike Dockter, PhD, professor and associate dean of administration and research for the College of Medicine. “It’s great when a researcher can get one NIH grant, exceptional if he or she can get two; but it’s phenomenal when an investigator has three separate, distinct grants running simultaneously.”

Dr. Tigyi joins four other UTHSC faculty members—Gerald Byrne, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Molecular Sciences; Gadiparthi N. Rao, PhD, professor of physiology, Anton Reiner, PhD, professor of anatomy and neurobiology and Ronald Wetzel, PhD, professor in the UT Graduate School of Medicine at the health science center campus in Knoxville—who each have three or more active NIH grants running simultaneously. To date, this group has contributed a total of over $27.5 million in NIH grants through UTHSC to the advancement of medical research.

 

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