OKLAHOMA CITY – The Presbyterian Health Foundation has awarded nearly $4.6 million in biomedical research grants to the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OUHSC) and the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (OMRF).

“We remain steadfastly committed to funding cutting-edge biomedical research on the Oklahoma Health Center campus,” said PHF President Tom R. Gray III. A major funder of research programs at the Oklahoma Health Center, PHF has awarded more than $25 million to support biomedical research in Oklahoma since 2014.

The foundation received proposals for seed grants, bridge grants, equipment grants and collaborative and team science grants in the areas of cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases, plus a new area of emphasis, COVID-19. A total of 70 grants were approved and funded.

At OMRF, a collaborative project is underway to discover how a viral pandemic like COVID-19 affects people living with multiple sclerosis (MS).  Led by associate members of OMRF’s arthritis and clinical immunology program, Robert Axtell, Ph.D., and Susan Kovats, Ph.D., the project will investigate the severity of a respiratory virus in people with MS and provide insights into how to treat COVID-19 in people living with the disease.

“Our current work supports the presence of a critical developmental window when disruption of the normal infant microbiome in babies born to obese mothers may predispose the infant to a number of immune diseases,” said Friedman, director of Harold Hamm Diabetes Center.

“Although multiple pathways are involved, we hope to understand how certain early bacteria can underlie development of a number of inflammatory disorders, including obesity, Type 1 diabetes, and fatty liver disease.”