Breadcrumbs Navigation

Home > Giving to Duke > Recent Gifts and Development News > Duke Biomedical Researchers Receive Inaugural Hartwell Foundation Awards

Duke Biomedical Researchers Receive Inaugural Hartwell Foundation Awards

Three Duke biomedical researchers havebeen selected to receive awards totaling $700,000 from The Hartwell Foundation, based in Memphis.

The awards will support basic scientific research to identify new neurological targets to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder, develop a rapid and cost-effective methodology for developing vaccines against pandemic flu and other respiratory diseases, and improve the health of malnourished infants.

Guopeng Feng, Ph.D., a neurobiologist in the School of Medicine, and Jing Dong Tian, Ph.D., a biomedical engineer in the Pratt School of Engineering, will each receive a Hartwell Individual Biomedical Research Award totaling $300,000 over three years. Nancie Jo MacIver, M.D., Ph.D., a pediatric endocrinologist in the School of Medicine, received a two-year $100,000 Hartwell Fellowship to enable further training as part of her career development.

“The primary mission of The Hartwell Foundation is to grant awards to individuals for innovative and cutting-edge biomedical applied research that potentially will benefit children,” Frederick Dombrose, Ph.D., president, said. It seeks to inspire innovation and achievement in all programs it supports.”

“The Hartwell Foundation is honored to support the work of these outstanding young scientists,” Dombrose added. “Each qualifying institution chose exceptional individuals of high promise in the field of biomedical research.”

Duke was one of nine institutions nationwide that qualified to compete for the foundation's inaugural class of Hartwell Investigator Awards. These selected institutions held their own internal competitions to nominate four principal investigators for individual recognition. Twelve individual researchers at the nine institutions received awards, and Duke University was only one of three institutions to receive two Hartwell Investigator Awards. Each institution that fully participated in the process also received funding for a postdoctoral candidate of its choice to receive the Hartwell Fellowship.

“These awards highlight the creativity and innovation of our faculty in biomedical science and engineering,” said Duke University President Richard H. Brodhead. “We are pleased to have The Hartwell Foundation's partnership to help develop early-stage research with the potential to foster broad advances in medicine to benefit both children and adults.”

Duke Chancellor for Health Affairs Victor J. Dzau, M.D. said partnerships with private foundations such as Hartwell are increasingly important in academic medicine.

“This kind of award is rare and much appreciated, because it supports science that is promising but not sufficiently developed to qualify for federal support,” Dzau said. “The Hartwell awards are exciting because of their potential to speed the translation of basic science into new therapies, as well as to advance our understanding of very basic biomedical science.”

Feng is an assistant professor in the Department of Neurobiology who joined Duke's faculty in 2000. He received the Hartwell Award for his work to identify the genes involved in obsessive-compulsive disorder, which affects 2 percent of all children over age 3. If successful, his results will significantly advance scientists' understanding of the neuropathology of the disorder and provide a unique basis for developing molecular targets for drug intervention.

Tian holds joint appointments as an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy. He has developed a high throughput combinatorial gene synthesis technology, which he will use to attempt to develop a cost-effective method for making fast-acting vaccines against rapidly-mutating infectious agents.

MacIver's research focuses on a little-known hormone, leptin, that may help prevent infection in children whose immune systems are suppressed due to malnutrition in infancy or in utero. She joined the Department of Pediatrics as a fellow in 2006 and completed residency training at Duke. She is a graduate of the Mayo Medical and Graduate School.

The Hartwell Foundation began in 1999, and its initial gift was to the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis to establish the Hartwell Center, a unique biomedical resource for integrating high throughput biotechnology and bioinformatics with academic programs.

In selecting participating institutions like Duke University, The Hartwell Foundation considers shared values relating to children's health, the presence of a medical school, strength in biomedical engineering, and the quality and scope of ongoing research. The foundation also considers institutional commitment to providing technical support, as well as to translational approaches that promote rapid clinical application of research results to the patient.

Other institutions that participated are, Johns Hopkins University, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, University of California-San Francisco, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, University of Pittsburgh, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and University of Wisconsin-Madison.