UC Part of Multi-Institution Innovation Center

The University of Cincinnati (UC) and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center are among a group of institutions from Ohio named by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as one of three NIH Centers for Accelerated Innovations (NCAI).

The Ohio multi-institution NCAI is led by Cleveland Clinic and also includes Case Western Reserve University and Ohio State University.

The two other centers named by NIH are the Boston Biomedical Innovation Center and California’s UC BRAID Center for Accelerated Innovation.

NCAIs are funded through the NIH’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and, according to NIH, will "target technologies to improve the diagnosis, treatment, management, and prevention of heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders and diseases.”

Grants totaling $31.5 million were issued to establish the three inaugural NCAIs. The NCAI at Cleveland Clinic, of which UC and Cincinnati Children’s are part, will receive $10 million over seven years.  One- to two-year sub grants will be awarded to projects at the partner institutions on a competitive basis. Requests for proposals should go out within the next 60 days, and a selection committee will make the final awards.

Evangelia Kranias, PhD, professor in the pharmacology and cell biophysics department at UC and a member of the UC Cardiovascular Institute will serve as the program’s site director for the University of Cincinnati.

"It’s a huge honor that Ohio has received a grant,” says Kranias. "It shows the excellence in cardiovascular science and innovation in Ohio.”

More about the NCAI program is available at http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/about/dera/otac/caip/CAIP_background.html.

Read the full release from the NIH. http://www.nih.gov/news/health/sep2013/nhlbi-26.htm

The UC Cardiovascular Institute is one of four institutes affiliated with the UC College of Medicine and UC Health.

UC has been in partnership since 2007 with Cleveland Clinic, Case Western Reserve and Ohio State through an Ohio Third Frontier-funded cardiovascular product development consortium called Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center (GCIC). It was through this collaboration and subsequent funding from GCIC that the startup CardioCeption, LLC, was formed in 2009 by UC’s Keith Jones, PhD, professor in the department of pharmacology and cell biophysics, and partners Neal Weintraub, MD, and Clint Dederick.