McLaughlin Research Institute Awarded Prestigious $13.8M National Institutes of Health Grant

The McLaughlin Research Institute of Great Falls, Montana, has received a prestigious $13.8M grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to launch the Center for Integrated Biomedical and Rural Health Research (CIB-RHR) and expand the research enterprise over the next five years.  Dr. Renee Reijo Pera, CEO and Director of the McLaughlin Research Institute, is the principal investigator of the newly awarded grant. This new center of research within the McLaughlin Research Institute is a part of the NIH Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) network across the United States and is the first Center of Excellence grant to be awarded to the state of Montana outside of Bozeman and Missoula, home of the flagship universities.  CoBRE centers are funded through three competitive phases of five years each; this is a Phase I award. The CIB-RHR will use a novel model to strengthen biomedical research infrastructure outside of the traditional university system in order to provide opportunity and solutions to rural Montanans across the state.  Indeed, Dr. Reijo Pera indicated that “it is a great pleasure to look out my window in the morning to see a herd of antelope and then travel to our Institute to do biomedical research; I am sure this is unique in the United States.”

 The focus on integrated biomedical and rural health research will enable recruitment of additional healthcare researchers and build cohesiveness around a common goal to address rural health in a multi-disciplinary fashion that includes basic, translational, and clinical studies. The CIB-RHR is based at the McLaughlin Research Institute and is a collaboration between faculty in the established partnership between the Institute and the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine – Montana and seeks to provide research opportunities for education and participation in clinical trials to those across the state.  The CIB-RHR will enhance the research infrastructure through career development, recruit additional healthcare researchers over the next five years and build and maintain critical core facilities that support expansion of research infrastructure in rural health research. To accomplish the overall goals, Dr. Reijo Pera indicated that the CIB-RHR begins with four initial projects focused on neurological diseases, diseases that are common and distinctively devastating, in rural environments.  These projects are led by Dr. Tiffany Hensley-McBain, Dr. Mikael Klingeborn, Dr. Moses Leavens and Dr. Andrea Grindeland and focus on Alzheimer’s disease, age-related macular degeneration, Parkinson’s disease and chronic wasting disease. In addition, Dr. Teresa Gunn will establish a core facility for Montana that is focused on gene editing and molecular analysis of models of human disease. 

 The application for the CIB-RHR grant was made possible by community members that supported the mission of the Institute over the years and provided funding that was used to recruit new researchers to the Institute.  Dr. Reijo Pera indicated that she is most appreciative of the support of community members over the last 70 years and especially Drs. Ann Tsukamoto-Weissman and Irv Weissman, who provided a gift of $5M that was invested directly in order to procure these outside federal funds.  As Dr. Weissman noted: “NIH Centers of Excellence grants are very difficult to obtain.  This is fantastic news and an awesome accomplishment that bodes well for the biomedical research enterprise in Great Falls and serves as a model for other rural states. The quality of science and leadership at the McLaughlin Research Institute is nationally recognized by this award.”  Dr. Weissman is the Virginia & D.K. Ludwig Professor of Clinical Investigation in Cancer Research at Stanford University and founder of several successful biomedical startup companies worth billions of dollars and grew up in Great Falls.  He was the McLaughlin Research Institute’s first intern under the founding director, Dr. Ernst Eichwald, in 1956.  He has continually supported the Institute through the years since.

 Members of the Board of Directors, chaired by Randy Gray, a lawyer and former mayor of Great Falls include Bjarne Johnson, Gary Bjelland, David Cameron, George Carlson, Max Davis, Paul Eichwald, Randy Gray, John Lane, Erik Sletten and Cathie Tronson.  The board also includes the Executive Director, Gene Thayer, and an honorary member, Arlene Reichert.  Each has been dedicated to the mission of the Institute for many years and support the direction of the research to focus on rural health and opportunity for this and the next generation.  As Randy Gray indicated, “MRI has been an amazing biomedical research leader for almost 70 years. As an independent not for profit entity in a rural state we have punched above our weight thanks to talented staff, a supportive board, and the generous contributions of donors. We are now entering a new chapter of partnerships and collaboration with Touro, Benefis and GF Clinic, among others.  The major grant from our first intern, Dr. Irv Weissman and his wife Ann has given us further leverage through success with this renewable CoBRE grant. This will help ensure that bright young folks from all over can discover a future for themselves right here in Montana. This in turn will diversify Montana’s economy as well as improve human health including in previously underserved segments of our population.”

 The CIB-RHR also includes faculty and students in the state of Montana’s only nonprofit medical school, the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine – Great, Falls, Montana campus (TouroCOM-MT). The Touro University System enrolls >19,000 students, with nearly 8,000 students in the medical and health sciences, making Touro one of the largest healthcare educational systems in the U.S. Their overall goal is to expand programs that prime students and faculty for successful careers, and to serve underserved regions of the United States. TouroCOM-MT was accredited and broke ground on the new medical school in Great Falls, Montana, in 2022 and the first class matriculated in August 2023. CIB-RHR funding will provide new research opportunities for faculty and students at TouroCOM-MT with an emphasis on medicine in underserved communities. Notably, approximately 55% of former Touro system graduates practice in underserved communities. As noted by Dr. Elizabeth Palmarozzi, Dean of TouroCOM-MT “We look forward to providing our students and faculty more research opportunities through the CIB-RHR.  TouroCOM-MT is dedicated to increasing the opportunities for research for medical students whether the research is basic, preclinical and/or clinical with opportunities to explore development, genetic underpinnings, diagnosis, and treatment of health conditions that are especially of concern and/or prevalence in rural environments (neurodegeneration, behavioral health, metabolic disease), and research areas vastly underrepresented in Montana (behavioral health, women’s health, bioinformatics/rural data, healthcare affordability and access). The CIB-RHR will contribute to this training hub for faculty, physicians and students.”

 As noted by Dr. Reijo Pera in the NIH application:  “This Center may be considered non-traditional as the home for the CIB-RHR is a nonprofit research institute, outside the traditional university system. We believe that this is a strength. The McLaughlin Research Institute and TouroCOM-MT in Great Falls, MT, provide a unique setting for expansion of the research enterprise beyond current geographical boundaries and scientific themes in Montana. There are few opportunities that match this one, in regard to distribution of the scientific research enterprise, in Montana or across rural communities in the United States.  It is a real testament to the strength of the biomedical enterprise in Great Falls.” 

 Please note: The research center described in this press release was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.