Left to right: Tamara Reid-Bush, Gwendolyn Hubbard and Dr. Joe Vorro view data as Dr. William Johnston positions Walter MacKlem.

The process is a bit like a scientific Johnny Appleseeding, but MSUCOM's internal grant program is bearing real fruit.

Each year the MSUCOM Office for Research distributes around $100,000 in "seed grants" to physician and basic science faculty to help them develop projects that will be more competitive for external funding from agencies like the National Institutes of Health.

Cindy Grove Arvidson, PhD, of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Joseph Vorro, PhD, of Family and Community Medicine, and John Wang, PhD, of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, all received seed grants this year.

"The Seed Grant Project allows investigators to obtain preliminary data on a research project that then they can use to go to a state or national funding agency," noted Justin McCormick, PhD, associate dean for research. "These data are necessary to demonstrate to extramural funders that the project is likely to work."

Dr. Arvidson is studying the pathogen that causes gonorrhea, a potentially dangerous venereal disease that is troublesome to treat. It produces no symptoms in as many as 50% of women, has acquired resistance to multiple antibiotics, and doesn't seem to elicit a protective immune response. Her work involves identifying organisms in the normal vaginal tract that affect gene expression in the pathogen, signaling to it that the environment is "good" for it to establish an infection.

Dr. Vorro is testing a practical and affordable method to allow osteopathic physicians and students to assess human motor behavior accurately, making such assessments more objective. 

Left to Right: Graduate Student Du Ying and Dr. Cindy Arvidson work together on this seed grant.

Dr. Wang is studying spinal muscular atrophy disease.

He's comparing data obtained using a new PC-based, hand-held gyroscope with those obtained from a gold-standard video-based system that's much more expensive and unwieldy to use. If the PC-based technology proves accurate and reliable, it will enhance clinical studies of musculoskeletal function and dysfunction and facilitate aspects of osteopathic manipulative medicine instruction.

Dr. Wang's research deals with the molecular biology underlying spinal muscular atrophy disease, a collection of inherited defects that lead to muscle wasting and weakness. His study will seek to identify the polypeptide complexes in the spinal motor neurons and whether certain changes in these cause cell death.