Funds Targeted for New Equipment to Battle Disease

UH Receives $1 Million Grant from W.M. Keck FoundationThe W.M. Keck Foundation of Los Angeles has awarded $1 million to the University of Houston for research equipment to study drug resistant bacteria and new treatments for genetic diseases.

The grant will enable UH's Institute for Molecular Design (IMD) to purchase nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and X-ray crystallography equipment. The university will match the grant with additional renovations, new faculty and student research positions.

"This grant further underscores the University of Houston's ongoing commitment to become a world-class, Tier One research university," says UH President Arthur K. Smith. "It is also gratifying to have one of our leading research centers recognized on a national level for its advanced work."

The new equipment is essential to the IMD's continued groundbreaking efforts and research into the biochemical basis for human disease.

"Human diseases are often the result of biochemistry gone awry. The causes of disease most often relate to a structural fault in one or more types of biomolecules," says IMD Director B. Montgomery Pettitt. "The new equipment will substantially upgrade the university's existing NMR and X-ray facilities and will enhance our ability to make macromolecular structure determinations of the proteins responsible for antibiotic resistance and the DNA responsible for inherited disease."

The W. M. Keck Foundation was established in 1954 by William Myron Keck , founder of the Superior Oil Company. The foundation's grantmaking is focused primarily on the areas of science, engineering, medical research and higher education.

"The W.M. Keck Foundation is pleased to make this award to the University of Houston in recognition of its outstanding work in the field of biomedical research. This area of study is vital to our understanding of the fundamental processes of biological organisms, particularly the human body," says Roxanne Ford, program director for the W.M. Keck Foundation.

UH researchers currently use the university's X-ray and NMR facilities, as well as equipment housed at the W.M. Keck Center for Computational Biology in the Texas Medical Center, to study diseases such as tuberculosis and cancer, and genetic disorders such as Huntington's Disease. Pettitt predicts that the new equipment will improve their efficiency up to a factor of 10.

X-ray crystallography and NMR allow researchers to determine how the atoms that make up a molecule are arranged. X-ray crystallography allows researchers to find the arrangement of atoms in a single, solid position. NMR allows researchers to understand how molecules bend and subtly change shape in a solution such as a human cell.

- SHELDON SMART

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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