Grant Opportunities

The overriding goal of the Oppenheimer Program is to provide seed money for worthwhile projects in health sciences at UCLA, for which alternative sources of funding are not readily available. These modest seed grants support innovative projects that are in initial stages of development. The Oppenheimer Program is administered by the Senior Associate Dean for Research in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

There are four separate seed grant programs under the Oppenheimer Program: Stein/Oppenheimer Endowment Awards, Clinical Translational Seed Grants, Prevention of Eye Disease, or CAIM.

CAIM Seed Grants
Seed Grant Program in Complementary, Alternative and Integrative Medicine CAIM) is administered in association with the Center for Neurobiology of Stress. This program accepts applications for pilot and feasibility projects. Funding up to $30,000 will be available for high-quality interdisciplinary basic science, translational, or clinical research addressing various aspects of complementary, alternative, and integrative medicine. Proposals can address mechanistic or outcomes aspects of CAIM, with an emphasis on mind/body interactions and traditional Chinese medicine.

Application Procedures
Information for the 2011 submission deadline will be announced in July.

Past Awardees

2008-2009

1. Deborah Ackerman and Mary Hardy
“Consortium-PROCAIM Practice Network Pilot Study”

The goal is to establish a practice network of academically-based integrative medicine clinics. Patients will be recruited from at least 8-10 clinics. They will complete pain and QoL questionnaires on the web site. They will be reminded by email at 3 months to complete their final questionnaires. Barriers and facilitators to participation by clinics and patient recruitment and retention will be evaluated with qualitative and quantitative methods.

2. Sylvie Bradesi
“Role of Spinal Immune Activation in Stress-Related Chronic Pain”

Using a validated rodent model of stress-induced hyperalgesia, the PI will investigate the molecular pathways involved in stress-induced glia activation and hyperalgesia.

3. Lisa Flook and Susan Smalley
“Mindful Awareness Practices for Elementary School Children to Improve Attention and Emotion Regulation”

The study will investigate a classroom delivered mindfulness program to a randomized sample of 120 2nd and 3rd grade children attending Seeds University Elementary School. The impact of mindfulness on executive functioning, biological stress reactivity will compared with silent reading control.

4. Lisa Kilpatrick
Meditation-induced Changes in the Functional Connectivity of the Default Emotional Arousal Network”

To assess the effect of an 8-week mindfulness training vs. wait-list control on the functional organization and efficacy of emotional arousal network in 24 female subjects.

5. Jennifer Labus
“The neurobiology of gut feelings: The role of gut inflammation on emotion processing”

We propose to assess emotional feelings, and their neurobiological underpinnings, of patients with ulcerative colitis (UC). We will study subjective and brain response to viewing negative emotional faces in 10 male UC patients. Patients will undergo functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brain at clinical remission and during a symptom flare. Mucosal inflammation will be quantified by measuring a battery of biomarkers from rectal biopsies obtained at the time of the study.

2007-2008

1. Diane M. Harris, Vay Liang Go, Guido Eibl, Paul WN Lee, WN Paul

To study mechanisms of actions of green tea, Scutellaria baicalensis (SB), and component phenols on eicosanoid production and proliferation in pancreatic cancer cells.

2. Johanna Jarcho and Edythe London
“The role of DA in placebo analgesia”

PET study using [18F]allypride to relate maginitude of placebo response with D2-like DA recepto density at resting baseline, and DA release associated with a painful stimulus paired with a placebo analgesic in healthy women.

3. Ann Lowe and Steve Berman
“Brain mechanisms in aromatrheapy: fmRI and mood changes in response to odors in females with functional abdominal pain”

An fMRIstudy to contrast central effects of pleasant and unpleasant odors during a social pain stmulus in women with IBS and health controls. Hypothesis: patients more responsive to odors in mood, discomfort, and central correlates of these.

4. Wenyuan Shi
“Effect of an herbal lollipop on reducing the oral pathogen Streptococcus mutans”

Pilot study of a sugar-free lollipop containing extract of Glycyrrhiza uralensis, which contains an antimicrobial component (Glycyrrhizol A) found to be active against Streptococcus mutans in laboratory studies.

5. Brandall Suyenobu, David Creswell, Suzanne Smith
“Mediation of pain by applied mindfulness training: an fMRI study”

Pilot study to determine if; a) training in mindful awareness meditation is effective compared no mindfulness training in reducing self-reported pain intensity and brain responses upon application of experimentally-induced thermal pain at post-training, and b) if applied mindfulness training is effective compared to no mindfulness training in altering brain responses to anticipation of pain during conditions of expected and unexpected presentation of experimentally-induced thermal pain at post-training.