November 29, 2017—BRONX, NY—Investigators at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, part of Montefiore, secured $174 million from the National Institutes of Health in federal fiscal year 2017, marking the largest annual total in the institution’s history (excluding supplemental stimulus funding distributed as a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009). Grants will advance research in a range of areas, including neuroscience and cognitive disorders, infectious disease, cancer and drug use disorders.

Dean Allen M. Spiegel, M.D.“At a time of intense competition for federal research dollars, this high-water mark is a convincing demonstration of the strength of our research faculty—and all the more remarkable given its relatively small size,” says Allen M. Spiegel, M.D., the Stanley and Marilyn M. Katz Dean for Einstein. “In addition to our longstanding strength in basic science research, our new relationship with Montefiore has opened up exciting new avenues for more meaningful collaborations that will advance our joint translational and clinical research enterprise.”

Among the notable new investigator-initiated projects, several tackle aging and dementia:

• $9 Million to Find Anti-Aging Therapies (Jan Vijg, Ph.D.)
• $6 Million to Untangle the Genetic Protections Against Alzheimer’s Disease (Nir Barzilai, M.D., and Zhengdong Zhang, Ph.D.)
• Two Grants Totaling $6 Million to Improve Cognitive-Impairment Detection and Prevention (Joe Verghese, M.B.B.S)
• $4 Million to Fight Alzheimer’s Disease with Anti-Inflammatory Diet (Yasmin Mossavar-Rahmani, Ph.D., R.D.)

Other major grants included those for infectious diseases, breast cancer and substance use disorders:

• Three Grants Totaling $12 Million to Fight Virulent Viruses (Kartik Chandran, Ph.D., and Jonathan Lai, Ph.D.)
• Three Grants Totaling $11 Million to Study AIDS-Related Neurological Problems (Joan Berman, Ph.D.)
• $7.5 Million for Center for AIDS Research (Harris Goldstein, M.D.)
• $6.4 to Identify Breast Cancer Biomarkers (Thomas Rohan, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., D.H.Sc.)
• $3.8 Million for First Long-Term Study on Medical Marijuana’s Impact on Opioid Use for Pain (Chinazo Cunningham, M.D., M.S.)

In addition, two researchers secured grants as part of NIH’s signature 2017 research project, the BRAIN Initiative:

• $3 Million to Investigate Natural and Learned Behaviors (Jose Luis Peña, M.D., Ph.D.)
• $1.8 Million to Study Brain Functions with Near-Infrared Light (Vladislav Verkhusha, Ph.D.)