Wayne State University

AIM HIGHER

Research highlights

Wayne State is a nationally recognized urban center of excellence in research and one of only two public urban universities holding the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s designation as an institution with “very high research activity” as well as the foundation’s most comprehensive classification for community engagement. WSU is among the nation’s top public universities for total research expenditures ($254 million total) according to the National Science Foundation. Much of Wayne State’s research originates in its acclaimed School of Medicine.  
Since 2006, total research funding has increased nearly 30 percent.

  • Civil engineering faculty members in Wayne State University’s Transportation Research Group aim to make neighborhoods near Michigan K-8 schools more pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly and educate K-8 students about traffic safety. The team, led by Tapan Datta, professor of civil and environmental engineering, received $190,000 through the Michigan Fitness Foundation as part of a broader initiative sponsored by the Michigan Department of Transportation. The funding will go toward the development of traffic infrastructure improvements and safety education programs in various Michigan K-8 schools as a part of the Safe Route to School program.
     
  • High blood pressure is a major public health concern and the leading cause of cardiovascular disease worldwide. The problem is particularly onerous for African Americans, who are disproportionately more susceptible to high blood pressure than non-Hispanic white Americans. Poor adherence to prescribed medication regimens contributes to the difficulty in managing the condition. Lorraine Buis, assistant professor in the College of Nursing, received a $297,224 grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to address these concerns by developing and testing a text messaging system that will remind Detroit-area African Americans with uncontrolled hypertension to take their blood pressure medication.
     
  • A WSU researcher was awarded $900,000 to determine a common genetic link among Gulf War Illness patients. For nearly two decades following the 1991 Gulf War, doctors noticed a trend in many veterans of that conflict: an inexplicable cluster of symptoms including but not limited to chronic fatigue, memory loss and depression. It wasn’t until 2008 that a scientific panel from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs concluded that a third of American troops who served in the Gulf War were suffering from combinations of these symptoms, now recognized collectively as Gulf War Illness (GWI). Now, Henry Heng, associate professor in WSU’s Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics, also of the Department of Pathology and the Karmanos Cancer Institute in the School of Medicine, intends to discover GWI’s mysterious biological cause. Heng received a grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to investigate whether GWI stems from genomic instability, which he believes is the common link among GWI patients.
     
  • Nearly all patients with advanced cancer experience severe pain, and almost half of all other cancer patients have some pain regardless of the type or stage of the disease. Pain often limits a patient’s daily activities and causes distress. A new study, led by Wayne State University’s College of Nursing and funded by a three-year, $1,078,000 award from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), aims to improve the care of African Americans with cancer pain. Prior research done by April Vallerand, WSU associate professor of nursing, showed that African American cancer patients experience higher pain levels, resulting from a lower feeling of control over pain and a need for help with pain management. Pain care must be highly individualized and responsive to the rapidly changing needs of patients and caregivers trying to manage pain and symptoms at home. This is especially important because patients and caregivers are increasingly responsible for daily pain and symptom management because of shorter hospital stays. The Power Over Pain - Coaching program will expand patients’ ability to function and is designed specifically for African American cancer patients undergoing outpatient treatment.
     
  • A team of Wayne State University students from the College of Engineering has been chosen to participate in EcoCAR 2: Plugging in to the Future, a one-of-a-kind program established by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors. This three-year program will educate the next generation of automotive engineers, giving them the knowledge and skills needed to continue the evolution of automotive propulsion technology and energy efficiency. The team, led by Jerry Ku, associate professor of mechanical engineering, will explore advanced vehicle solutions to reduce petroleum use, energy consumption and emissions through research collaboration with industry, as well as workforce preparation-oriented curriculum development. Ku is director of Wayne State’s electric-drive vehicle engineering graduate program, in which many of EcoCAR 2’s participating students are enrolled. The competition challenges 16 North American universities to reduce the environmental impact of vehicles without compromising performance, safety or consumer acceptability. WSU was the only university in Michigan invited to participate in EcoCAR 2.
     
  • Hongwei Zhang, assistant professor of computer science in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, was awarded a $425,000 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award to redesign wireless networking central to feasibility of wireless vehicular control and other mission-critical applications. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated in 2009 that each year more than 1.2 million people die of road traffic injuries, which may become the fifth leading cause of death worldwide by 2030. To combat this trend, WHO encourages stricter enforcement of more comprehensive traffic laws.  
     
  • Phillip Levy, M.D, associate professor of emergency medicine, received a $1.9 million National Institutes of Health grant to study the role of vitamin D in halting and reducing subclinical cardiac damage in African Americans suffering from high blood pressure. Levy will use the five-year grant to determine how vitamin D affects cardiac structure and function and vascular function in blacks with hypertension. The research could identify vitamin D as a safe, effective and inexpensive therapy to stop and even reverse cardiac ravages caused by high blood pressure.
     
  • Though it generally is known that obesity dramatically increases the risk for type 2 diabetes, the biological mechanisms for that connection still are unclear. Backed by several NIH grants, James Granneman, professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences and pathology in Wayne State University’s School of Medicine, is examining the nature of those mechanisms — specifically how the toxicity of lipids, or fatty acids, links obesity and diabetes. His research shows great promise that may lead to new anti-obesity drugs.
     
  • The National Institute of General Medical Sciences of NIH awarded a five-year grant of more than $3 million to support the Wayne State University Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (IMSD) program. Established in 1978 as the Minority Biomedical Research Support program with NIH support, IMSD aims to provide undergraduate and graduate students with a more personalized experience to foster career development while enhancing persistence and success in science majors. The program provides undergraduates opportunities to maximize academic and research skills, and helps graduate students gain experience in teaching, mentoring and course development. At Wayne State, the program has supported more than 700 students. As of 2010, 390 undergraduates in the program have gone on to complete bachelor’s degrees, 64 have obtained master of science degrees, and 68 have gone on to complete doctorates. The program is led by Joseph Dunbar, associate vice president for research.
     
  • The National Institute of General Medical Sciences of NIH awarded Lori A. Pile, assistant professor of molecular cell biology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, $1.39 million to research how the alteration of chromatin regulates cellular division and growth. The study is intended to support the development of cancer treatments currently undergoing clinical trials.
     
  • Two U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grants were awarded to Jeffrey Ram, professor of physiology in the School of Medicine, to keep new non-native invasive species out of the Great Lakes and minimize the impact of those already there. A grant of $520,000 aims to verify the effectiveness of ballast-water treatment systems aboard ships bound for the Great Lakes. The project’s goal is to develop land-based, nonindigenous systems to assess how well shipboard ballast-water treatment systems work, as well as how long they last. A second two-year grant of $500,000 will be used to test an early warning system in Toledo Harbor (Maumee River and Bay) and western Lake Erie for the entry of invasive species into the Great Lakes.
     
  • Two Wayne State University research groups have teamed with the Toyota Technical Center, a division of Toyota Motor Engineering and Manufacturing North America, Inc. (TEMA), to work on projects for TEMA’s Collaborative Safety Research Center. Of the 10 projects announced, Wayne State University will lead two. The first, led by Richard Young, research professor of psychiatry in the School of Medicine, and Li Hsieh, associate professor of communication sciences and disorders in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, will focus on research and analysis of a driver’s cognitive interaction with in-vehicle technologies. The second, led by King-Hay Yang, director of the Bioengineering Center and professor of biomedical and mechanical engineering in the College of Engineering along with Haojie Mao and Xin Jin, postdoctoral fellows in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, will develop software models of a 10-year-old child and an elderly female human body for crash simulation purposes.
     
  • Aloke Dutta, professor of pharmaceutical sciences in the Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, is leading research efforts to develop new treatment options to slow the progression of Parkinson’s disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that affects nearly six million people around the world. Every year 50,000 to 60,000 new cases are diagnosed in the United States alone. Symptoms may include tremor, slowed motion, rigid muscles, difficulty initiating movement, speech changes, postural instability and more. Currently no ideal therapies are available for slowing the degeneration process while relieving symptomatic abnormalities associated with Parkinson’s disease. Dutta is hoping to change that with a $2.15 million research grant, “Novel Neuroprotective Treatment for Parkinson’s Disease,” from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of NIH. Dutta and his team aim to develop multifunctional therapeutic agents that will be useful not only in treatment of symptoms, but also as disease-modifying agents promoting survival of the dopamine neurons that would otherwise gradually degenerate in Parkinson’s disease.
     
  • According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, asthma is the third-ranking cause of hospitalization of children younger than 15 in the United States. It is the leading cause of school absences from a chronic illness in 5- to 17-year-olds, accounting for an annual loss of more than 14 million school days. A Wayne State University researcher is now investigating the impact of risky family environments on asthma morbidity in children. A five-year, $3 million grant, “Risky Family Environments and Childhood Asthma,” funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of NIH, will be led by Richard Slatcher, assistant professor of psychology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Slatcher will study 180 children between the ages of 10 and 15 in Detroit, using an innovative home-based naturalistic assessment tool called the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR). The EAR will measure whether identified risky family behaviors are associated with greater asthma morbidity — such as symptom severity, emergency room visits and pulmonary function — in three waves of data collection over two years. In addition, the research will try to determine if asthma morbidity increases because of avoidant coping behaviors and poor management of asthma treatment, such as noncompliance with treatment plans or poor asthma management behaviors.
     
  • A $1.7 million grant from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities of NIH will be led by Sally K. Roberts, assistant professor of mathematics education, with the aim of preparing girls to study health-related disciplines in college. The goal is to minimize health disparities nationwide by increasing the number of local high school girls, particularly those of color, who enter college prepared to study health-related science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Roberts plans a three-pronged approach to increase the interest of metropolitan Detroit area girls in health-related STEM disciplines: The intervention will comprise summer academies; academic year cafes for girls and parents; and continuous mentoring support by WSU undergraduate women students through social networking sites and other technology.
     
  • Gilda Hillman, professor of radiation oncology at the School of Medicine and the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, has shown that compounds found in soybeans can make radiation treatment of lung cancer tumors more effective while helping preserve normal tissue. The team led by Hillman had shown previously that soy isoflavones, a natural, nontoxic component of soybeans, increase the ability of radiation to kill cancer cells in prostate tumors by blocking DNA repair mechanisms and molecular survival pathways, which are turned on by cancer cells to survive the damage radiation causes. Soy isoflavones can make cancer cells more vulnerable to ionizing radiation by inhibiting survival pathways that are activated by radiation in cancer cells but not in normal cells. In normal tissues, soy isoflavones also can act as antioxidants, protecting those tissues from radiation-induced toxicity. During the past year, Hillman’s team achieved similar results in non-small lung cancer cells in vitro. She recently received a two-year, $347,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute, part of NIH, to investigate whether those results also proved true for non-small cell lung tumors in mice, and has found that they do. Her findings appear in the journal Radiotherapy and Oncology. Hillman emphasizes that soy supplements alone are not a substitute for conventional cancer treatment, and that doses of soy isoflavones must be medically administered in combination with conventional cancer treatments to have the desired effects.

Other research news from 2011

  • Carol Miller, professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the College of Engineering, was appointed to the Great Lakes Science Advisory Board (SAB) by the International Joint Commission (IJC). Miller was appointed for a two-year term effective Dec. 31, 2010. SAB, established in 1978, assists the IJC as scientific adviser to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the waters of the Great Lakes basin ecosystem. The SAB is developing recommendations on matters related to research and the development of scientific knowledge pertinent to the identification, evaluation and resolution of current and anticipated problems with water quality in the Great Lakes. The board comprises eight members from the U.S. and eight from Canada.
     
  • String Project@Wayne was named String Project of the Year for 2011 by the American String Teachers Association. Laura Roelofs, associate professor of music, directs String Project@Wayne, which is one of 36 national string projects. Now in its third year, the project enrolls more than 140 area third- through seventh-graders who take lessons on violin, viola, cello and bass from Wayne State music majors. The string projects aim to increase the number of well-qualified string teachers while providing exemplary string education to children in underserved areas. Wayne State’s program stands out as one of the few string projects located in large metropolitan centers.
     
  • RetroSense Therapeutics, LLC, a Michigan-based company, executed an exclusive worldwide option and signed a license agreement for novel gene-therapy approaches for treating blindness. The therapies were developed at the School of Medicine. Zhuo-Hua Pan, professor of anatomy and cell biology, with colleagues at Salus University in Pennsylvania, developed the breakthrough therapy and follow-on approaches that offer promise to people suffering with incurable blindness caused by age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa — retinal degenerative disorders that are currently incurable. With this technology, combined with the business and drug development expertise of RetroSense, Pan hopes his treatment is on the fast track to restoring a vital part of the human experience to people suffering from retinal degeneration.