RESEARCHERS' WORK PAYS OFF.

Byline: Greg Bolt The Register-Guard

Deep in your gut there may be a ticking bacterial time bomb. Karen Guillemin wants to defuse it.

Guillemin, a biology professor at the University of Oregon, is trying to figure out why this relatively common bug triggers the growth of cancer tumors in a few people but pretty much leaves everyone else alone. She received a $600,000 grant from the American Cancer Society to pursue the research, one of dozens of awards that helped the UO set another record for overall research funding last year.

"I was really delighted," Guillemin, a second-year professor, said of receiving the grant. "It's great because it means we can now get down to business and start doing these experiments."

The UO brought in $77.8 million in grants and awards in the 2002-03 fiscal year, a 3.6 percent increase over the record of $75 million set last year. Rich Linton, the university's vice president for research, said this year's record follows one that saw research funding leap 30 percent, one of the biggest single-year increases ever at the UO.

"For our faculty to perform so well this year on the heels of a 30 percent growth year in 2001-02 and at a time when other financial support has decreased is a testament to the collective strength of our researchers," he said.

Over the past three years, research funding has grown by almost $20 million, thanks largely to big increases in the research budgets of the major federal funding agencies. The National Institutes of Health doubled its research budget over the past five years, and the National Science Foundation is trying to do the same.

The U.S. Department of Education, one of the major sources of UO research funds, grew by 18 percent this year. The UO College of Education is the university's research powerhouse, bringing in about $22 million of the institution's total funding.

Almost $70 million of the university's total came from federal agencies, most of it through competitive grants in which universities vie for a limited pool of dollars. The UO received $25.3 million from the Department of Health and Human Services, $22.7 million from the Department of Education and $12.4 million from the National Science Foundation. The remainder came from a variety of government agencies and nonprofit organizations, such as the cancer society.

Guillemin's grant could lead to a better understanding of stomach cancer and point to new treatments. She is focusing on the bacterium Helicobacter pylori - known as H. pylori - a bug that is present in about half the world's population, particularly in developing countries.

The bacterium made news about 20 years ago when it was found to cause many ulcers. Scientists have since correlated H. pylori with stomach cancer, and Guillemin said it could be a factor in as many as half the world's stomach cancer cases.

It's not known how the bug causes cancer, but it doesn't appear to do it by the usual method of causing mutations that trigger the uncontrolled cell growth that is the basis of the disease.

"It seems there's something about the way the bacteria over the long term establishes itself in the human stomach and changes the stomach environment that gives rise to cancer," she said.

Using a sophisticated robotic tool to break down the bacterium's DNA so that individual genes can be manipulated, Guillemin hopes to find out what causes it to turn against its host. Certain strains of the bacterium are more strongly associated with cancer than others, something that could help advance the research.

"We know particular genes that are present only in the cancer-causing strains," Guillemin said. "What we're interested in is understanding at the molecular level what some of those cancer-associated genes are doing."

That's only one of many research projects to win funding this year, on issues ranging from helping families with special needs children to investigating ways to help teens with behavior and substance programs.

For the second year, the UO brought in more outside research funding than the total amount it received from the state for general operations. The state provided $69.6 million in general fund support last year.

Linton said the university established several new research centers last year, including the Lewis Center for Neuroimaging and the Neuroinformatics Center. It also completed formal organization of the Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, the Center for Indigenous Survival and the Center on Diversity and Community.

The successes still leave the UO a distant second in research funding among the state's public universities. Oregon State University remains the champ, having brought in $124.5 million last year.

Whether the UO's two-year string of records will continue is uncertain. In the current deficit climate at the federal level, it remains to be seen whether research funding will continue to grow or even remain at current levels.

"I think that's a major concern," Linton said. "We have yet to see strong evidence the research budget will be cut, but at the unprecedented level of deficits we're seeing in the federal budget it's certainly making us very wary and concerned at what we might see in research funding."

UO RESEARCH DOLLARS

Where some of the money goes

$6.7 million for continued operation of the Early Childhood Coordination Agency for Referrals, Evaluations and Services, known as EC CARES, that assists more than 1,000 Lane County families with special needs children

$1 million for a program to develop intervention programs for children with reading problems

$1.6 million to investigate ways to help teens with behavior and substance abuse problems

$560,000 for a program to improve science education at area elementary schools 

CAPTION(S):

Karen Guillemin, a biology professor at the University of Oregon, is studying a common bacteria's link to cancer. The project recently received a grant.