September 7, 1999   

Media Contact: Kate Deely (619)543-6163

UCSD REPRODUCTIVE MEDICINE WINS $4 MILLION NIH GRANT
Establishes Women’s Reproductive Health Research Center

UCSD Department of Reproductive Medicine recently received a $4 million National Institutes of Health grant to advance its research in women’s reproductive health.

The five-year-grant, funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the Office of Research on Women’s Health at the National Institutes of Health, will help to build the next generation of investigators in obstetrics and gynecology by giving clinicians the experience needed to become researchers.

UCSD is one of only 20 centers nationwide to be awarded with the grant, which will fund 75 percent of the salary for three new clinical researchers. These researchers, being referred to as “scholars,” are new recruits, not existing faculty, allowing UCSD to grow its already strong reproductive medicine department. The scholars will spend 75 percent of their time in the research labs, and the remaining 25 percent in the clinics.

“Selection by the NIH for this faculty development grant is a great honor,” said Thomas R. Moore, M.D., chairman of UCSD Department of Reproductive Medicine and principal investigator of the grant. “This will enable us to recruit and retain top young physicians who will help push forward the frontiers of women's health research over the next few years. These kinds of cutting edge programs help keep UCSD’s Women’s Health Services at the forefront.”

“This grant will allow us to be a Women’s Reproductive Health Research Career Development Center,” said Robert Brace, Ph.D., Professor of Reproductive medicine, who is serving as UCSD’s program director. “The NICHD realized there was very little research in the area of obstetrics and gynecology by clinicians. They established this program to prevent any possible extinction of clinicians doing research.”

This NICHD program was established last year, awarding grants to 12 universities and hospitals. This year only eight centers were selected. Brace said UCSD was one of many academic medical centers throughout the nation who applied for this grant this year. UCSD was top choice, according to Brace, who said UCSD reproductive medicine department’s established research presence as well as its strong fellowship program.

Armando Arroyo, M.D., is UCSD Department of Reproductive Medicine’s first scholar. Arroyo, who recently finished a three-year reproductive endocrinology fellowship at UCSD, is doing basic research and is studying how a cell line secretes GnRH, a hormone that controls the female reproductive system. “This program is allowing me to do research that I am very interested in and practice more than clinical medicine,” Arroyo said.

Brace said he expects to have two more scholars at UCSD by summer 2000.