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Return on Investment: 2010 grant winners discuss their research spending

by Richard Quinn •

“The grant money from the [ACS and Triological Society] has really given us a boost with which we can now move our research along at a faster pace, ” he said.

Seungwon Kim, MD

Seungwon Kim, MD, Assistant Professor, Department of Otolaryngology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh

Time is money, and Dr. Kim believes the money he received over the past three years has bought him the time to find novel ways to fight head and neck cancer. The project, originally backed by a $400,000 NIH grant award in 2008, targets both epidermal growth factor receptor and vascular endothelial growth factor receptor in oral squamous cell carcinoma, specifically studying how the use of both agents could help improve treatment. The goal is to help reduce the mortality rate of the disease, which Dr. Kim says has remained stagnant at roughly 50 percent for more than three decades.

Dr. Kim, in the third year of his five-year grant period, is becoming a subject matter expert in angiogenesis, particularly in its use as a therapeutic target. “This isn’t esoteric,” he said. “It has real translational impact on the care of our patients and how they are treated.”

The value of multi-year grant funding for his project, Dr. Kim said, can’t be overstated, noting that “a study like this is not something you complete in a year or two.” Physicians looking to tackle long-term research goals need to know there is a financial backstop that enables their work to translate from a laboratory setting to clinical application, he said.

The funding “was very significant because it freed me up from some of my clinical responsibilities so I could dedicate a larger chunk of time toward my research,” he said. ENT TODAY

Tips for Landing a Grant

Grant applications are like snowflakes: No two are exactly alike.

But there are useful tips for anyone looking to secure funding from the Triological Society’s two main grant programs: the Career Development Award and the Clinical Scientist Development Award, co-sponsored by the society and the American College of Surgeons (ACS).

“The first thing is really to establish an interesting and pertinent research question,” said Peter C. Belafsky, MD, PhD, MPH, associate professor and director of the Voice and Swallowing Center at the University of California at Davis and a 2010 Career Development Award winner.

Dr. Belafsky, who is using his grant to examine the role of the environment in laryngitis, should know. His application was rejected once before, but he used that experience to rework the proposal. He noted that grant funders today are focused on research that has “significant translational potential, so [they are looking for] a project that can be transformed into either improved delivery of health care, improved utilization of resources, improved patient health or decreased costs.”