Program for Breakthrough Biomedical Research

About The Program for Breakthrough Biomedical Research (PBBR)

The Fall 2011 PBBR Proposal Deadline was October 18, 2011. The next PBBR Call for Proposals will go out in April 2012.

Click here to see the Fall 2011 Call for Proposals.
Click here for the 2011 Annual Byers Award Call for Proposals. If you have any questions, contact Jennifer Banaszek at banaszek@cmp.ucsf.edu or 415.476.8445.

The Program for Breakthrough Biomedical Research (PBBR) seeks to stimulate and support highly innovative biomedical research at UCSF. The focus is on projects of potentially high impact that are substantially more creative or risky than projects supported by NIH and other traditional funding mechanisms. Thus, projects thought fundable by NIH are unlikely to be funded by PBBR. See below for a list of recent awards.

The Program for Breakthrough Biomedical Research is currently in its remarkable fifteenth year. In 2008, objective data and subjective assessments were collected from the project investigator of each grant awarded, and the outcomes are astounding. Investigators credit the Program for Breakthrough Biomedical Research with engendering over $300 million in subsequent grant funding, and projects and their derivatives resulted in well over 900 publications and several patents. To view the Program 10-year retrospective report in its entirety, click here.

Thanks to all scientists who submitted a PBBR proposal for the April 22, 2011 deadline. The following awards were made in the New Frontier Research Category:

Kaveh Ashrafi: Pesticides, Pollutants, and other Endocrine Disruptors as Culprits in Obesity

Roland Bainton: Interrogating BBB Physiology in vivo with a Novel Viral-Based Approach to Target cDNA/shRNA Constructs to CNS Endothelial Cells

Joachim Li: Exploring a New Paradigm in Molecular Evolution

Holly Ingraham & Matthias Hebrok: High Throughput Screening for Compounds that Modulate Shh Expression in Pancreatic Cancer and that Target a Novel Pathway of NR5A Sumoylation (project also part of UCSF-Roche Extending Innovation Network Program)

Jody Baron & Susan Lynch: How Does Gut Microbiota Regulate Immunity in the Liver and the Host Response to Hepatitis B Virus? (project also part of UCSF-Sanofi Leap to Innovation for Therapeutics and Technology Program)

Jayanta Debnath & Allison Xu: Autophagy in Hypothalamus-Mediated Energy Balance and Obesity(project also part of UCSF-Sanofi Leap to Innovation for Therapeutics and Technology Program)

Katja Bruckner: Control of Hematopoiesis by the Peripheral Nervous System: A Drosophila Model

Denise Chan & John Murnane: Synthetic Lethal Targeting of Telomerase

James Rubenstein & John Kurhanewicz: The Impact of Macrophage Polarization on Vascular Perfusion and Metabolism in the Central Nervous System Lymphoma Microenvironment (project also part of UCSF-Roche Extending Innovation Network Program)

Barbara Panning: Investigation of the Role of the Mammalian Glucose-Sensing Pathway in Self-Renewal of Pluripotent Cells

Michael McManus: smORFs, uORFs, and fORFs (project also part of UCSF-Sanofi Leap to Innovation for Therapeutics and Technology Program)

The following awards were made in the Technologies, Methodologies, and Cores Category:

Nevan Krogan & Barbara Panning: Development of mammalian epistasis mapping technology (project partially funded by PBBR industry

Xiaokun Shu: Design and engineering of long wavelength highly fluorescent proteins for whole-animal imaging (project also part of UCSF-Roche Extending Innovation Network Program)

The Fall 2012 PBBR Call for Proposals went out September 6, 2011. Proposals are due October 18, 2011. Funding will begin January or February of 2012 for NFR awards, and May or June of 2012 for TMC awards.

*SAVE THE DATE*
ANNUAL BYERS AWARD IN BASIC SCIENCE LECTURE
Thursday, February 23, 2012
4:00 - 5:30 PM (Wine and cheese to follow lecture)
GENENTECH HALL AUDITORIUM
SPEAKER: Nirao Shah, Ph.D.

MOLECULAR AND NEURAL CONTROL OF SEXUALLY DIMORPHIC BEHAVIORS