UT Health San Antonio has scored major multiyear funding from the National Institutes of Health.
The Alamo City institution will receive $24 million over the next five years as part of the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award, or CTSA, program. The highly competitive grant funding is expected to enable scientists at UT Health San Antonio and elsewhere in the region to more quickly turn new research discoveries into improved patient care.
UT Health San Antonio is a designated CTSA hub and will collaborate with partners on the translational science project. Most of those partners are also in the Alamo City, including the University of Texas at San Antonio and the San Antonio Military Health System, among others.
UT Health San Antonio President Dr. William Henrich said the new grant represents an “enthusiastic vote of confidence” in the institution’s work and its researchers’ ability to positively affect the future of health care.
Dr. Robert Hromas, vice president of medical affairs for UT Health San Antonio and dean of the Joe R. & Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine, said the new NIH grant will enable the institution to bring cutting-edge treatments and new clinical trials to the Alamo City.
“This is remarkable for the entire city,” Hromas said during an exclusive interview. “Hundreds of people worked more than a year on this grant so that we can better translate science to the clinic. The collaboration was essential in us getting the grant.”
UT Health San Antonio was also designated as a CTSA hub in 2008 and 2013. It is one of 43 academic medical centers in the country to hold the CTSA designation and have an NCI-Designated Cancer Center.
While several organizations are involved in the new grant, including the University of Texas at Austin College of Pharmacy, the bulk of the NIH funding is expected to directly benefit the Alamo City.
“Most, if not all of it, will stay in San Antonio,” Hromas said. “It will help develop San Antonio’s reputation in biomedical science.”
The CTSA program enables research teams to tackle scientific and operational problems in clinical and translational research.
Andrea Giuffrida, vice president for research and professor of pharmacology at UT Health San Antonio, said the NIH funding will help develop more biomedical professionals needed to improve the delivery of care. Giuffrida said the NIH award will also enable UT Health San Antonio to compete for additional research funding available only to CTSA institutions.
The UT Health San Antonio MD Anderson Cancer Center, recently rebranded as the Mays Cancer Center, is among the institutions expected to reap the rewards of the new NIH funding.
“This will help the center bring some of their early-stage drugs to clinical trial,” Hromas said.