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Higgins: Over $4.9 million for Hauptman-Woodward Institute

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Tue, Jun 15th 2021 12:20 pm

Funding will make HWI home to National Crystallization Center 

Congressman Brian Higgins announced a federal grant totaling $4,911,595 for Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute (HWI) to establish the National Crystallization Center. The five-year grant, awarded through the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, will enable scientists and researchers across the nation to access HWI’s state-of-the-art disease research equipment, technology and expertise.

“This is an incredibly exciting award, which seeks to build on the work Hauptman-Woodward has led for over two decades,” Higgins said. “It puts Buffalo at the center of a major job-creating and disease-fighting national investment.”

Federal funding was awarded to Dr. Sarah E.J. Bowman, director of the Crystallization Center at HWI; and key contributors Dr. Edward Snell, president and CEO of HWI; and Dr. Miranda Lynch, a quantitative scientist specializing in crystallization screening.

The Crystallization Center works to help scientists better understand and combat diseases by providing a high level of detail visualizations of the disease’s molecular structure.

“We are very excited that our Crystallization Center has been awarded this NIH funding to become a national resource for researchers across the United States,” Bowman said. “We will continue to provide our unique expertise and capabilities and expand those to benefit many more researchers across the nation helping to understand, treat and cure disease.”

Snell added, “This is recognition of the expertise and scientific contribution that the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute has made to structural biology over the past decade. It brings a spotlight to Buffalo and shows how we can impact the nation.”

A primary goal of the grant is to improve access to crystallization instrumentation and expertise for additional researchers in academic, nonprofit, government and industry labs. The project aims to support a broad range of biomedically important research to accelerate drug discovery for today’s diseases.

In 2020, Higgins announced nearly $600,000 in National Science Foundation funding to support HWI’s research into the molecular structure of SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19.

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