GREENWOOD, S.C. — A scientist at the Greenwood Genetic Center will spend the next five years digging into a family of rare inherited diseases with $1.4 million in new federal support, the center announced this week.
Heather Flanagan-Steet, the center’s associate director of research, received a Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award, known as a MIRA, from the NIH branch that funds general medical sciences.
Federal grant records list the award as R35GM161481, a project on how sugar-chain chemistry and metabolism interact while tissues form. The first-year installment of $284,847 was issued Sept. 3.
Her lab focuses on glycosylation, the way cells attach sugar chains to proteins and fats. When that step goes wrong it can cause congenital disorders of glycosylation, a group of nearly 200 known conditions with few treatments. The team works with zebrafish and studies several forms, including PMM2-CDG, the most common.
Instead of paying for a single project, a MIRA backs a researcher’s whole program, so the lab can chase new leads as they turn up. Center President and CEO Steve Skinner called the award recognition of the program she has built.
The same federal records show a separate $1,106,000 award to the center in September from the Health Resources and Services Administration to buy research equipment for an Alzheimer’s initiative that carries the name of Carroll A. Campbell Jr.
The Greenwood Genetic Center operates as a national reference laboratory for rare genetic disorders from its campus on Gregor Mendel Circle.
Filed under: Greenwood SC Health News
