Niagara University has been awarded a $60,000 research grant from the Merck Institute for Science Education and the American Association for the Advancement of Science to continue studies into the prevalence of coronary artery disease in Niagara County.
The grant, payable in equal installments over a three-year period, will allow undergraduate students and faculty to collaborate with the Heart Center of Niagara Falls in a pilot study entitled "Iron Status, Oxidative Stress, and Coronary Artery Disease." NU's research effort will examine the use of positron emission tomography (PET) and computed tomography angiography (CTA) for evaluating coronary artery disease.
Coronary artery disease is the leading cause of death in Niagara County. The county and Western New York also have the highest incidence of coronary artery disease in the nation.
Students and faculty from NU's Academic Center for Integrated Sciences have already worked on projects related to coronary artery disease with the Heart Center, GE Healthcare, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Hauptman Woodward Institute and the University at Buffalo.
NU was among only 14 colleges and universities that qualified for the 2009 Merck-AAAS Undergraduate Science Research Program grants, which were announced in the Feb. 6 edition of Science magazine. The grant program seeks to promote interdisciplinary research experience for undergraduate students in chemistry and biology.