Cedars-Sinai ranks in top 10 nationally in NIH funding

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded Cedars-Sinai investigators more than $100 million in grants during federal fiscal year 2022, placing the organization among the nation’s top independent hospitals for federal research funding. 

Cedars-Sinai received 190 grants—totaling $102,108,325—during the fiscal year that ran from Oct. 1, 2021, to Sept. 30, 2022. The figure represented an $8 million increase over the amount received during the previous federal fiscal year.

As a result, Cedars-Sinai ranked #9 in total NIH funding among independent hospitals in the U.S. in FY22. The medical center ranked #11 one year before. 

These independent hospitals include the Harvard-affiliated medical centers and children’s hospitals, who operate research programs on their own without university ownership or support.

“Our rising competitive position in NIH funding is a reflection of our growing corps of talented investigators whose tireless discovery efforts in basic, translational, clinical and health services research continue to fuel development of new therapies for a vast array of diseases,” said Shlomo Melmed, MB, ChB, executive vice president of Academic Affairs, dean of the Medical Faculty, and the Helene A. and Philip E. Hixon Distinguished Chair in Investigative Medicine at Cedars-Sinai.

The highly competitive grants to Cedars-Sinai support research such as using artificial intelligence to better predict and diagnose diseases, understanding determinants of liver metastasis, and studying diversity and other factors that influence the immune response to SARS-CoV-2.

The grant-funded research is part of a growing research and education enterprise at Cedars-Sinai, where investigators conduct more than 2,500 research projects annually. 

Cedars-Sinai research is published regularly in the most prestigious peer-reviewed journals, including Cell, Nature, Circulation, Science journals, The Lancet, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Clinical Investigation and The New England Journal of Medicine.

Top Cedars-Sinai NIH new award recipients in federal fiscal year 2022 and their funded research studies:

• Peter Heeger, MD, received $4.1M for his work on the assessment of biomarker guided CNI substitution in kidney transplantation.
• Susan Cheng, MD, received $3.9M for her research in women's evaluation of systemic aging tenacity, heart failure risk in the community, and vaccine-induced immune-inflammatory response and cardiovascular risk.
• Jane Figueiredo, PhD, received $3.9M for her work in diversity and determinants of the immune-inflammatory response to SARS-CoV-2, novel biomarkers for cancer-related fatigue, and time-restricted eating and cancer.
• Paul Noble, MD, received $3.2M for his research on epithelial-mesenchymal interactions in pulmonary fibrosis and chronic allograft dysfunction, and molecular regulation of progressive pulmonary fibrosis.
• Debiao Li, PhD, received $3.1M for his work using artificial intelligence to predict pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, using quantitative multiparametric MRI to assess the effect of stem cell therapy on chronic low back pain, and assessing mast cell degranulation in infarcted myocardium using quantitative multiparametric MRI.

This year’s funding also included awards for training programs in prostate cancer, endocrinology, diabetes and metabolism, and advanced heart disease research. These training grants provide research opportunities in highly collaborative laboratories for students at the undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral levels.

“The NIH funding helps our faculty gain new insights into how to better treat diseases and also allows us to train and develop a diverse group of postdoctoral fellows and early-career physician-scientists,” said Jeffrey Golden, MD, vice dean of Research and Graduate Education and director of the Burns and Allen Research Institute at Cedars-Sinai. “We are grateful for the ongoing support from the NIH and extremely proud of our investigators, who continue to be at the forefront of advancing scientific inquiry and discoveries.”