IU School of Informatics receives $1.7M in grants

If funding fuels research, a handful of IU scientists are about to enter a new field of discoveries with a full tank of resources.

A bioinformatics group from the School of Informatics has received three grants totaling $1.7 million, two of which are from the National Institutes of Health. The third grant comes from Eli Lilly and Company, one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in the nation, said Lisa Herrmann, manager of communications for the IU School of Informatics.

Researchers will use $810,000 from the NIH during the next three years to develop new methods of analyzing patients’ protein levels, with the ultimate goal of helping doctors identify diseases at a quicker rate, Herrmann said.

Professors Yuzhen Ye and Haixu Tang received $770,000 to use throughout the next three years. The two professors will use the money to research for the Human Microbiome Project, which is attempting to generate resources for more in-depth characterization of microbes living in the human body, Herrmann said.

Ye said he is excited about how this grant will help the project.

“The HMP award we received gives us a great opportunity to get involved in and contribute to the worldwide human microbiome project,” Ye said.  

He added the grants “are going to boost the already respected reputation” of the informatics programs at IU.

Eli Lilly and Company awarded the third grant of $140,000 to be used by Tang and investigator Yehia Mechref, who will use the money to create software tools for lipidomics analysis, Herrmann said.

Tang said without the funding from these types of grants, in depth research development and collaboration with other companies like Eli Lilly may not be possible.

“The grant is crucial for our current collaborative research in lipidomics,” Tang said, adding the funding will be mutually beneficial for the research at both IU and companies that choose to partner with the University in projects.

Bobby Schnabel, dean of the IU School of Informatics, said the grants are not just important to the school and major research companies in the area, but they are also immeasurably beneficial to members of the community.

“The tools that will come out of these research projects will have a lasting impact on the life sciences industry,” he said. “And (they) will likely help many people over time.”