The Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall University is starting a $100,000 program to support network physicians and researchers working to develop treatments for diabetes, depression and epilepsy.
The Research Pilot Project Funding Program is supported by the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine at Seton Hall University’s Office of Research and Graduate Studies, Hackensack Meridian Health’s Office of Research, and the Hackensack University Medical Center Foundation.
The six selected projects will be seeded with more than $100,000 in total to help scientists generate preliminary investigative results to prepare applications for competitive federal and foundation awards.
Four of the six projects will receive $20,000, with one receiving $19,500 and the sixth receiving approximately $9,000 to carry out the scope of their work. All are overseen by principal investigators who are faculty members of the medical school, and who have made the case that preliminary data could support a competitive extramural grant application within a year of this funding.
The recipients are:
- Dr. Saba Afzal, Department of Psychiatry, to investigate saffron versus SSRI as an augmentation therapy for adults with mild to moderate depression;
- Dr. Michael Carson, Department of Medicine, for finding ways to improve detection of post-partum dysglycemia in women with gestational diabetes;
- Dr. Steven Ghanny, Department of Pediatrics, to employ a novel assay and genetic factors to study patients with steroid-refractory acute graft-versus-host disease;
- Dr. Chinwe Ogedegbe, section chief of Emergency and Trauma Center Research at Hackensack Meridian Health, to investigate a pilot program for smoking cessation in the Emergency Department;
- Linda Siracusa, Department of Medical Sciences, who is studying a new investigative model of adult-onset epilepsy;
- Michelle Titunick, Department of Medical Sciences, investigating what effects vitamin D supplements have on fracture repair in Type 1 diabetes disease models.
