Two Health Center researchers have been awarded state grants for their study of diseases and chronic illnesses associated with tobacco use.
Kevin Claffey with the Center for Vascular Biology has been awarded $341,572 for his lab’s research into cardiovascular disease.
Irina Bezsonova, assistant professor in the Department of Molecular, Microbial and Structural Biology, received $300,000 for her research into developing anti-cancer drugs.
The grants are part of a total of $3,010,611 awarded this year by the Department of Public Health (DPH) from the state’s Biomedical Research Trust Fund. These funds will support nine research projects conducted by researchers from the Health Center and Yale University.
Claffey says his projects purpose is “to prove that novel inhibitors, the phospholipase C-beta 2 (PLC-ß2) enzyme, can significantly reduce pathological vascular permeability and thus limit cardiac muscle damage and risk of heart failure that occurs after standard of care treatment for cardiac infarction or heart attack.”
Bezsonova describes her research as “focusing on a potential target for anti-cancer therapies, USP7; specifically, the project seeks to uncover the molecular mechanism of this enzyme’s specificity towards its substrates, which will provide basis for development of highly specific anti-cancer drugs.”
“These projects were selected from a field of highly competitive applications,” stated DPH Deputy Commissioner Lisa Davis. “The funds made available through the Biomedical Research Trust Fund represent an investment in Connecticut-based research that is providing new insight into how to treat and prevent leading causes of death and disability.”
The fund was established by the Connecticut General Assembly in 2000 to back research into tobacco-related illness and funded in part by the state’s share of Tobacco Settlement Fund proceeds.
With this eighth round of proposals funded by DPH, nearly $14.5 million dollars have been awarded to Connecticut research institutions for the purpose of funding biomedical research into tobacco-related diseases, Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes.
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