News Release

NIH awards grant for research to advance emergency care

LA BioMed researchers among the leaders in southern California studies

Grant and Award Announcement

LA BioMed

LOS ANGELES - The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently awarded a groundbreaking grant to a Southern California network of hospitals, ambulance agencies and LA BioMed to fund research to advance and improve emergency care.

The NIH is providing the funding for Strategies to Innovate EmeRgENcy Care Clinical Trials Network (SIREN), a collaboration of hospitals and other emergency care providers that have formed 11 regional networks around the country to conduct the research. The Southern California collaboration, which includes LA BioMed, received an initial grant of $825,934 with additional funds expected as the program moves forward.

Each of the SIREN regional networks will perform large, pivotal clinical trials of promising new treatments for cardiac arrest, body trauma and other medical emergencies. During the next five years, the NIH will work with the Southern California network and other hubs across the country to fund and administer multiple clinical trials to improve the outcomes for patients with neurologic, cardiac, respiratory, hematologic and trauma emergency events.

SIREN will implement a total of at least four large (>1,000 patient) simple, pragmatic clinical trials in the emergency department and pre-hospital settings. The clinical trials will be meritorious, peer-reviewed projects which will be awarded under separate funding announcements.

"The support provided to the SIREN research network by the NIH provides an unprecedented opportunity for our emergency medical services and emergency department collaborators, both in the Los Angeles area and beyond, to investigate promising treatments for devastating illnesses and injuries affecting our patients and communities," said Roger J. Lewis, MD, PhD, an LA BioMed lead researcher and a co-principal investigator for the Southern California SIREN collaboration. "It is a privilege to be a part of this important national collaborative effort."

Dr. Lewis is also chair of the emergency department at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where the LA BioMed studies will be conducted. Among the other institutions in the Southern California SIREN consortium are academic medical centers: Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital in Westwood; hospitals operated by University of California campuses in Irvine and San Diego; Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Also part of the consortium are emergency medical service agencies in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties, plus multiple specialty hospitals and treatment centers.

In addition to Dr. Lewis, the principal investigators are Dr. Sidney Starkman, UCLA professor of emergency medicine and neurology, and leader of the UCLA Brain Attack Team; Dr. Marianne Gausche-Hill, UCLA professor of clinical emergency medicine and pediatrics and medical director of Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency, and Dr. Jeffrey Saver, UCLA professor of neurology and director of the UCLA Comprehensive Stroke Center.

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About LA BioMed

Founded in 1952, LA BioMed is one of the country's leading nonprofit independent biomedical research institutes. It has approximately 100 principal researchers conducting studies into improved treatments and therapies for cancer, inherited diseases, infectious diseases, illnesses caused by environmental factors and more. It educates young scientists and provides community services, including prenatal counseling and childhood nutrition programs. LA BioMed is academically affiliated with the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and located on the campus of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. For more information, please visit http://www.LABioMed.org


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