Posted on September 5, 2012

University of Missouri Announces 2012 Coulter Projects

The University of Missouri has announced a three-year, $5 million partnership with the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation that will support teams of physicians and biomedical engineers working to commercialize their research and improve health care.

Five teams involving ten co-investigators from MU's School of Medicine and College of Engineering will receive funding to develop better methods for identifying and treating patients with lung cancer, colorectal cancer, and other forms of the disease; create superior grafts for anterior crucial ligament reconstruction surgeries; devise a more accurate way to measure the severity of burn injuries; and invent a device for earlier detection of neuro-developmental disorders in infants and toddlers.

The selected projects also will receive assistance from research and development experts from both private industry and academia. Over the next four years, MU, one of fifteen universities participating in the foundation-sponsored program, will announce additional projects slated to receive funding.

"MU is home to a wealth of translational research opportunities waiting to be further developed," said Jinglu Tan, James C. Dowell professor and chair of biological engineering at MU and Coulter program principal investigator. "Each of the Coulter projects selected for funding demonstrated exceptional scientific merit and potential to meet a well-defined, unmet clinical need."