UNC's Egan Lands $1.47M Grant
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty surgeon Thomas Egan, M.D., M.Sc., has just added a $1.47 million federal grant to his recent spate of activity.
The famed lung transplant specialist founded a biotechnology company last year called X-In8 Biologicals, which was bootstrapped with the help of a $30,000 Company Inception Loan from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.
The company, which is also part of the Biotechnology Center's BATON entrepreneurial support program, is based on Egan's discoveries of compounds to reduce tissue damage after organ transplantation.
Now the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has awarded Egan a $1.47 million, two-year grant for research into ways to keep donated lungs viable outside the body before transplant. The research could lead to a significant increase in the number of lungs available for transplant.
The grant was awarded under the NHLBI's Translational Research Implementation Program, a two-stage program designed to translate fundamental research ideas into proof-of-concept efficacy testing in patients.
This Stage 1 grant is supported by the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act Grand Opportunities grants program, for large-scale research projects that the National Institutes of Health says have "a high likelihood of enabling growth and investment in biomedical research and development, public health, and health care delivery."
NHLBI is part of the National Institutes of Health.