November 12, 2008

SIU Med School Receives NIH Grant to Study Prostate Cancer

A research scientist at SIU School of Medicine in Springfield has been awarded a three-year federal grant to study prostate cancer metastasis from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health.  The total budget for the grant is $218,250.

Vickram Ramkumar, Ph.D., associate professor of pharmacology and a member of the research team at SimmonsCooper Cancer Institute at SIU, is the principal investigator for the project.  Ramkumar is studying a drug that reduces prostate cancer metastasis in animals, in particular how the drug works on a molecular level and its optimal dosage and treatment schedules.  The research may lead to an increase in treatment options for metastatic prostate cancer in humans.

Ramkumar’s research, which totals $1.3 million, has been funded for fifteen years by the National Institutes of Health, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, and the National Organization of Hearing Research.  It is focused on the molecular pharmacology of adenosine receptors in cardiovascular and auditory systems and examining the role of the A3AR in prostate cancer.

Ramkumar joined the SlU faculty in 1992.  He earned his doctoral degree from the University of Maryland at Baltimore (1986) and his bachelor’s degree from Anderson College in Anderson, Ind. (1978).  Ramkumar also completed medical technology training at the Metpath Institute of Laboratory Education in Hackensack, N.J. (1980). 

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