Dr. Hobbs is a member of the Department of Pediatrics in the UAMS College of Medicine and co-director of the Arkansas Center for Birth Defects Research and Prevention. The center is a collaborative effort of UAMS, the Arkansas Department of Health (ADH), the Arkansas Reproductive Health Monitoring System (ARHMS), and the Arkansas Children's Hospital Research Institute (ACHRI). 

Using an allocation from the ABI, the ACHRI has recruited a leading genomics research scientist to work in the birth defects center. Patrycja Krakowiak, Ph.D., currently with the National Institutes of Health, will join the center May 1. Dr. Hobbs said outside funding, such as the appropriation from the tobacco settlement revenue, can stimulate important research and additional external research funding. The Arkansas General Assembly’s historic support for [ARHMS], a birth defects registry at UAMS and ACH, is an example, she said. The legislature established the registry, a program to compile demographic information about birth defects in Pulaski County, in 1986. After a decade of relatively limited state funding, the registry was able to obtain additional federal funding and expand the registry statewide. Today it is regarded as one of the best in the nation, UAMS Chancellor I. Dodd Wilson, M.D., said during the meeting.

 Ralph Henry, Ph.D., a molecular biologist in the Department of Biological Sciences in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at UAF, briefed the ABI board on prospects for using tobacco and other plants as manufacturing sites for proteins that can be used to treat health problems including drug abuse and overdose. Dr. Henry and his colleagues are experimenting with altering tissue samples of plants in a laboratory to insert the protein material and then grow the plants in greenhouses. The procedure promises to dramatically reduce the cost of manufacturing therapeutic proteins. (S. Michael Owens, Ph.D., director of the ABI and a scientist at UAMS, has conducted complementary research on how certain therapeutic proteins can treat drug addiction, collaborating with Dr. Henry and Donald E. McMillan, Ph.D., and Brooks Gentry, M.D., of UAMS. See related article.)

Dr. Henry praised the ABI for supporting his research group’s work. The group’s next challenge is to enhance its capacity for proteomics and bioinformatics, he said.

B. Alan Sugg, Ph.D., president of the University of Arkansas System and chair of the ABI board, praised both scientists for conducting research in keeping with the ABI’s mission of reducing tobacco-related illnesses and promoting better health for Arkansans.

Links on This Page

Tobacco Settlement Funds: http://www.uams.edu/today/011702/tobacco.htm
UAMS, UAF: http://www.uams.edu/today/110101/addicts.htm
Arkansas Center for Birth Defects Research: http://arbirthdefectsresearch.uams.edu/
Department of Biological Sciences: http://biology.uark.edu/bisc.html
Related article: http://www.uams.edu/today/110101/addicts.htm

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