$900,000 for Biomedical Projects

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that $900,000 is available for projects supported by the State University of New York (SUNY) Health Network of Excellence. SUNY Health is one of five SUNY Networks of Excellence established in the last year to increase research collaborations and spur commercialization activities between SUNY and industry.

The first round of funding involving teams of students and faculty will work with partners in the private sector on six research projects. Each research project will receive approximately $150,000.

One research team is working to create a rapid and highly sensitive hand-held biosensor platform to advance clinical healthcare and accelerate to detect human neural pathologies including stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, and traumatic brain injury.

The biosensor system uses disposable cards that incorporate cutting-edge Tethered Enzyme Technology (TET). The plan is for these cards to be inserted into hand-held readers similar to digital cameras. In the future, the cards will be integrated with smartphones to provide telemedicine links to nearby hospitals and provide on-the-spot quantitative and interpretive readouts.

In another project, researchers will use the funding to produce a roadmap to create a SUNY-wide centralized “big data” Clinical Integrated Data Repository (CIDR) to include SUNY EHR data. The plan is to combine EHR data from across SUNY’s campuses to provide a valuable “big data” resource that would not be possible for any one campus.

Other funded research projects on other SUNY campuses will:

  • Develop a new 3D printing technology for custom manufacturing of soft tissues used in organ transplantation. Participants in the project include University at Albany, Binghamton University, Cornell University, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
  • Identify novel drug targets and inhibitors to eradicate TB. Participants in the project are the University at Buffalo, Downstate Medical Center and Stony Brook University
  • Develop new drugs and antibiotics to combat pathogens or bacteria that can cause serious information or disease. Participants in the project University at Albany, University at Buffalo, and the Albany Molecular Research

 

In addition, the SUNY Network Aging Partnership (SNAP) is being established to coordinate collaborative research across SUNY’s four medical universities to help compete for scientific funding, to accelerate publication of research projects, and to recruit and mentor trainees.

The Partnership will also investigate frailties and ways to enhance lifespan across the health spectrum. The University at Buffalo, Downstate Medical Center, Stony Book University, and Upstate Medical University are taking part in the partnership.