RICHMOND, Va. (May 12, 2008) – The Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine has received a competitive grant totaling nearly $6 million from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Child Health & Human Development to examine polycystic ovary syndrome, a disorder of the endocrine system that affects as many as 5 million women.
Polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS, causes hormonal imbalances leading to irregular menstrual cycles, excess facial and body hair, weight gain and adult acne. Women with PCOS are at high risk for developing Type II diabetes and at increased risk for cardiovascular disease.
The five-year grant will support an interdisciplinary and translational research center in PCOS, making VCU one of only15 Specialized Cooperative Centers Program in Reproduction and Infertility Research (SCCPRIR) in the country.
“This research program initiative expands the existing PCOS program at VCU, allowing interdisciplinary and collaborative studies with partnering institutions, and will enhance our ability to bring research discoveries from the laboratory bench quickly to the clinical care of women with PCOS,” said John Nestler, M.D., vice chair of the Department of Internal Medicine and chair of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism at the VCU School of Medicine. Nestler, a pioneer in PCOS research, is the primary investigator for the project.
“VCU’s SCCPRIR program focuses on the use of genetics to identify risk for PCOS in an individual woman and pharmacogenomics, designed to identify the optimal treatment for an individual patient,” he said.
The SCCPRIR is administered by the Reproductive Sciences Branch of the NICHD, and provides funding for a limited number of research centers in the reproductive sciences. The purpose of these centers is to provide an arena for multidisciplinary interactions among basic and clinical scientists interested in establishing high-quality programs in reproduction and infertility research. The centers also serve as national resources for the training and career development of new scientists electing to pursue research in high priority areas of reproduction and infertility research.
In the 1980s, Nestler was among the first scientists in the world to suggest that insulin was an important reproductive hormone. His pioneering work to induce ovulation through the use of such insulin-sensitizing drugs as metformin has led to the common use of metformin to treat infertility in women with PCOS. In 1998, in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Nestler's research team was the first to publish findings on the combination therapy of metformin and clomiphene to promote ovulation.
Key investigators collaborating on this research include Jerome F. Strauss III, M.D., Ph.D., dean of the VCU School of Medicine, and Richard Legro, M.D., of Penn State University. Paulina Essah, M.D., of VCU’s Division of General Internal Medicine has a development project on the grant, and there are collaborators from the University of Pennsylvania and Hershey Medical Center.
For more information on VCU’s program, visit www.vcu.edu/pcos.
About VCU and the VCU Medical Center: Virginia Commonwealth University is the largest university in Virginia and ranks among the top 100 universities in the country in sponsored research. Located on two downtown campuses in Richmond, VCU enrolls nearly 32,000 students in 205 certificate and degree programs in the arts, sciences and humanities. Sixty-five of the programs are unique in Virginia, many of them crossing the disciplines of VCU’s 15 schools and one college. MCV Hospitals and the health sciences schools of Virginia Commonwealth University compose the VCU Medical Center, one of the nation’s leading academic medical centers. For more, see www.vcu.edu.