Personalized-medicine research center gets a $1.5 million boost

Fresh funding for Cleveland’s Center for Proteomics and Bioinformatics was among nearly $8.75 million in donations announced Tuesday by the Case Western Reserve University Medical School.

The grants also fund new research into addiction, surgical training and orthopedics.

The $1.5 million grant from the Cleveland Foundation to the Center for Proteomics and Bioinformatics will develop unique diagnostic tests to manage chronic diseases. Proteomics is the entry point for personalized medicine, and can describe how proteins effect different biological systems. This grant will further research to better understand genetic data from patients, determine how different kinds of people are susceptible to certain conditions and develop countered treatments.

The center’s research includes work on diabetes-related bladder dysfunction as well as research that could help treat emphysema, thrombosis and dementia.

The center was created four years ago through a $5 million donation from the Cleveland Foundation. It recruited protein biologist Dr. Mark Chance from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, and set a goal to build regional expertise around the study of proteins and how they change in disease. It already offers a Pilot Research Award for five projects that operate out of the center and eventually apply for funding from the National Institutes of Health.

The new funding will also lay the “groundwork for attracting biotech start-up companies to the area,” according to a university press release.

Other donations announced include:

• $1.5 million from the Figgie Foundation for a professorship in orthopedics. The donation honors Dr. Harry E. Figgie III, the late CWRU alumnus and joint-replacement specialist at University Hospitals Case Medical Center.
• $2 million from the Forest City Enterprises Charitable Foundation, Inc. to the Center for Surgical Skills Training, which included an endowed professorship.
• $1.75 million through multiple sources to create an endowed chair in home-centered health care.
• $942,307 from the John Templeton Foundation to expand addiction research at CWRU that’s shown recovering addicts who helped others with their addiction problems were twice as likely to be sober in the year following treatment as compared with those who didn’t help.