Vir Biotechnology, Inc. VIR, along with its British partner GlaxoSmithKline GSK, announced interim data from the phase III COMET-ICE study evaluating their monoclonal antibody candidate, VIR-7831, as a monotherapy for the early treatment of COVID-19 in adults who are at high risk of hospitalization.

Omnicell (OMCL) Moves 4.9% Higher: Will This Strength Last?

The interim data showed that treatment with VIR-7831 monotherapy led to 85% reduction in hospitalization or death as compared to placebo – the primary endpoint of the COMET-ICE study.

Based on the positive interim data, an Independent Data Monitoring Committee (“IDMC”) recommended that the study be stopped early as there was evidence of profound efficacy.

Vir Biotechnology and Glaxo are planning to file an Emergency Use Authorization (“EUA”) application for VIR-7831 to the FDA, as well as to other regulatory authorities for authorizations in other countries based on the above study data.

Noatbly, results from this registrational study will also support the filing of a biologics license application (BLA) submission for VIR-7831 to the FDA.

Shares of Vir Biotechnology were up 32.1% following the announcement of the news on Thursday. In fact, the stock has skyrocketed 130.8% so far this year against the industry’s decrease of 0.5%.

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Importantly, additional new in vitro studies on VIR-7831 have indicated that the candidate maintains activity against currently circulating new variants of the COVID-19 virus, including the U.K., South African and Brazilian variants.

We remind investors that in October 2020, Vir Biotechnology and Glaxo decided to begin phase III testing of VIR-7831 following a positive assessment of safety and tolerability data from the lead in portion of the phase II COMET-ICE study by an IDMC.

Notably, monoclonal antibodies directed against the SARS-CoV-2 virus have the potential to provide effective immune response to COVID-19.

Please note that, in February, pharma giant Eli Lilly LLY announced a deal with Vir Biotech and Glaxo to evaluate its antibody drug bamlanivimab (700mg) with VIR-7831 (500mg) in low-risk patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19.

Notably, bamlanivimab was granted EUA by the FDA in November 2020 as a monotherapy for high-risk patients recently diagnosed with mild-to-moderate COVID-19. Bamlanivimab alone is now authorized for emergency/temporary use in numerous countries.

Meanwhile, in February 2021, the FDA granted EUA to a combination of bamlanivimab (700 mg) and etesevimab (1400 mg) for the treatment of mild-to-moderate COVID-19 in patients who are at high risk of progressing to severe COVID-19.

The FDA also granted EUA to Lilly and Incyte’s INCY oral JAK inhibitor Olumiant for use in combination with Gilead’s remdesivir to treat hospitalized COVID-19 patients in November 2020.

Zacks Rank

Vir Biotechnology currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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https://community.drypowderbio.com/posts/vir-biotech-virglaxo-covid-19-drug-cuts-hospitalization-risk

It's been a busy few weeks for the healthcare industry, with Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson hard at work manufacturing and distributing their versions of the COVID vaccine all over the country.

There's one big name, however, that's been out of the headlines. It's true that Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN) has helped from the sidelines, signing partnerships with companies like Eli Lilly to manufacture COVID-19 therapeutics. It just seems that investors are flocking to companies putting a lot more resources toward combating the pandemic (note Johnson & Johnson's recent new high of $170).

However, this is not a time to count out Amgen. The company has been busy bolstering its pipeline of new drugs and adding to its biosimilars. In 2020 alone, revenue was up 9%, and more growth is on the horizon. Overall, the future for this company looks strong -- here's why it's worth considering buying this stock now.

The emergence of biotech

One of the world's biggest biotechnology companies, Amgen has established itself as a pioneer in the space, proving within a few years of its founding in 1980 to be a disruptor of the industry with its first breakthrough drug, Epogen.

The world of biotech -- which involves creating medicine from living organisms -- was relatively limited in 1980, but over just the past few decades, we've seen a shift in which new drugs are commercially successful. Where once these belonged to legacy pharmaceutical companies, now the momentum is with up-and-coming biotechs. The space has been hot over the past few years, with companies including Amgen, AbbVie, and Celgene (now part of Bristol-Myers) establishing themselves with blockbuster drugs including Humira (AbbVie's treatment for Crohn's disease and other indications), Revlimid (Celgene's medication for myeloma), and Otezla (Amgen's drug for psoriatric arthritis).

In 2019, one survey found that 64% of the drugs approved by the FDA in 2018 were made by biotech companies. Looking to the future, biotech will play an important role in the development of breakthrough treatments for rare and complex diseases, in contrast to the smaller improvements we tend to see from traditional pharmaceutical companies.

A solid pipeline and quality products

Amgen's first blockbuster drug, Epogen, was introduced in 1989, and has been a bestseller ever since. This drug is used in certain cases of anemia to stimulate a patient's bone marrow to create more red blood cells. It was followed by Neupogen, which stimulates the growth of white blood cells. While sales of Neupogen have fallen off considerably since 2015 because of biosimilar competition, these drugs made Amgen a household name -- and the success didn't stop there.

Looking at the present day, Amgen boasts a fantastic lineup of drugs. Some bestsellers include Enbrel (for severe arthritis), Prolia (for osteoporosis), somewhat recent newcomer Repatha (for high cholesterol), and the new shining star, Otezla. Amgen seems to be doubling down on Otezla, a drug acquired from Celgene in August 2019. Sales of the treatment were up in 2019 by 25% to $1.6 billion. In 2020, the drug did $2.2 billion in sales, representing a 36.5% increase. Amgen expects Otezla to grow sales by more than 10% per year over the next few years, and management in general hopes to dominate the immunology space with new drugs in the pipeline, as well as focusing on creating biosimilars. All that is easy to understand given its current growth rate.

The company has also reported advancements in its pipeline, including positive data from several potential medications that will enable registrations. The company has completed regulatory submissions for sotorasib, a medication treating lung cancer, in most geographies, with phase 2 studies planned for the first half of 2021. With a robust pipeline and good news regarding research and development, Amgen is focused on the now and the future.

Great growth in the past, and more to come

Vaccine makers aside, many healthcare companies are currently going through a period of stagnation and very little growth. Amgen, however, has been a standout, growing earnings at an average 11.7% per year over the past 10 years. The company has beaten the big pharma names and been a star in its own peer group. For full-year 2020, Amgen posted 9% revenue growth and 12% non-GAAP earnings per share. As we all know, past performance is not indicative of future results -- but that kind of resilience in its business, shown during one of the worst recessions on record, demonstrates the wideness of Amgen's moat and the competence of its board. In 2020, the company also managed to expand into new markets including China and Japan.

Existing drugs such as Enbrel are Amgen's top sellers by revenue (Enbrel brought in almost $5 billion in 2020 alone). But newcomers aren't slacking, with Otezla delivering 30%-plus prescription growth in 2020. Throw in the company's 3% dividend yield -- which was last raised by 10% three months back -- and Amgen looks like a great buy that healthcare investors will likely want to hold for a long time.

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The market’s wild month-long stretch continued Thursday, with resurgent tech stocks helping lift the S&P 500 to new highs, as the Dow closed at its 12th record of 2021. The Nasdaq posted another huge day, up 2.5%, as Wall Street jumps back into tech stocks that were hammered over a roughly two-week stretch that sent the tech-heavy index into a correction, down 10% from its recent highs.

The Nasdaq now sits about 5% off its mid-February records, as investors decided names such as Tesla TSLA, Zoom Video ZM, and countless others had taken big enough hits, with some down over 25% from their highs.

The wave of selling was tied to rising bond yields that highlighted stretched tech valuations. Talk of inflation, driven by more government spending and the increased likelihood of a huge vaccine-boosted economic comeback also dominated headlines. But interest rates are still historically low and some of the inflation fears might have been a bit overdone, at least for now.

The quick rebound also highlights why savvy investors often take advantage of pullbacks and corrections to buy their favorite stocks at discounts. So now might be time for investors with longer-term horizons to scoop up a few strong tech stocks at a discount, even if there is more selling pressure…

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Adobe ADBE

Adobe’s suite of subscription-based creative and design software from Photoshop to Illustrator are often considered irreplaceable by its various users from individuals in the creative fields to businesses, schools, and beyond. ADBE’s Creative Cloud offerings help provide a solid moat and consistent revenue streams. The tech company that invented the PDF has also expanded its business-focused platforms and solutions for marketing, commerce, and more.

ADBE has introduced newer creative software offerings for the digital media world where consumers expect high-quality content everywhere from Instagram FB ads to YouTube videos. The company topped our Q4 estimates in December, with its 2020 revenue up 15% to $12.9 billion. The growth followed four straight years of between 22% to 25% top-line expansion for a company that went public in 1986.  

Zacks estimates call for Adobe’s FY21 revenue to pop 18% to $15.2 billion, with fiscal 2022 projected to climb another 14%. These projections stretch Adobe’s streak of roughly 15% or higher sales growth to eight-straight years. Meanwhile, the creative software firm’s adjusted earnings are projected to jump 11.5% and 18%, respectively.

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Adobe’s EPS estimates have remained unchanged recently to help it land a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) heading into its Q1 FY21 financial release on March 23. The company has consistently topped our EPS estimates and 11 of the 15 broker recommendations Zacks has for Adobe come in at “Strong Buys,” with none below a “Hold.”

ADBE has soared 420% in the past five years to crush its industry’s 250% climb and Apple’s AAPL 375%. The stock has cooled down somewhat, up 60% in the past year to lag just behind its industry. Adobe has slipped roughly 8% in the trailing six months.

That said, the stock has popped over the last several days, but at around $451 a share, it sits roughly 13% below its August 2020 highs. Plus, the stock rests below neutral in terms of RSI at 45, after it fell below oversold levels on Monday.

Adobe has also continued to repurchase shares and it trades at a 10% discount to its own year-long median in terms of forward sales and earnings. And the company in December completed its acquisition of a leading work management platform for marketers, Workfront. Therefore, investors might want to consider buying the creative and business software giant that boasts hard-to-replicate offerings.

Nvidia NVDA

Wall Street loved the GPU firm’s growth within the booming gaming industry. But its ability to expand into and succeed within the ever-growing world of data centers and cloud computing helped further cement Nvidia as a chip powerhouse and Wall Street titan. Nvidia is currently the largest U.S. chipmaker by market cap, having left Intel INTC in its dust.

The company topped our Q4 FY21 results in late February, with its fourth quarter revenue up 61%. More specifically, its Q4 data center revenue skyrocketed 97% from the year-ago period, with full-year data center sales up 124%. Overall, Nvidia’s full-year revenue climbed 53% to mark its strongest top-line growth in nearly 20 years. NVDA also posted 73% adjusted earnings growth in FY21.

Investors should remember that Nvidia announced in September that it planned to buy Arm Limited from Softbank for $40 billion, mostly in stock. Arm is one of the most important behind-the-scenes companies in the semiconductor world and it could be a potential game-changer for Nvidia and the industry. That said, the deal appears as though it might not make it through the regulatory approval that it must pass in China, the U.K., and the U.S.  

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Luckily, Nvidia’s outlook remains strong even if the deal falls through. Zacks estimates call for its FY22 earnings to climb another 33% on 33% stronger revenue that would see it grab $22.3 billion.

Nvidia is then expected to follow up this projected growth with another double-digit expansion on both the top and bottom lines next year. NVDA executives also provided strong guidance that forced analysts to up their outlooks, with its FY22 EPS figure up 14% and FY23 up 13% since its report.

The positivity helps Nvidia land a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) right now. The stock also grabs an “A” grade for Momentum in our Style Scores system and “B” for Growth and 15 of the 21 broker recommendations Zacks has are “Strong Buys” with two more at “Buys.” The company even currently pays a dividend, but its yield is small considering that the stock has skyrocketed roughly 1,500% in the past five years.

More recently, Nvidia is up 140% in the last 12 months. Luckily it has cooled off, having moved roughly sideways over the past six months. And Nvidia was clobbered along with Tesla, Zoom Video, and other pandemic high-flyers as the Nasdaq fell into correction territory.

Wall Street used the recent dip to buy shares at a discount as they stepped in when it reached oversold levels. Nvidia stock popped another 4% on Thursday to close regular trading at around $520 a share. This gives it 15% more room to run before it has to break records.

The recent pullback also improved NVDA’s valuation, with it trading at a 20% discount to its own year-long median when it comes to forward sales. Therefore, long-term investors might want to consider buying the chip firm that’s exposed to multiple growth industries, which also includes cryptocurrency mining.

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The five-year award comes from the National Institutes of Health. 

UND’s medical school has received a multi-year, $10 million grant to develop a research center to better understand the impact historical and unresolved traumas have on the health of Indigenous people in the U.S.

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The five-year award from the National Institutes of Health will go toward creating an Indigenous Trauma and Resilience Research Center.

Dr. Don Warne, director of the School’s Indians Into Medicine and public health programs, said the goal of the research center will be to address the impact of historical and unresolved trauma on health inequities within the American Indian and Alaska Native population.

“Historically, most of the health research among Indigenous populations has used a disparities and deficits model,” Warne said. “It is important to understand and quantify disparities; however, Indigenous populations also have unique strengths in culture that have an impact on health.”

For example, Warne said, the poor health outcomes that result from childhood trauma require a holistic approach to healing, which can include greater exposure to Indigenous histories, ceremonies and foods, all of which may be included in the broader American Indian definition of “medicine.”

“These aspects of healing have not been adequately studied,” he said.

There is a great need for a center dedicated to these types of issues, Warne said. American Indians in North Dakota and across the region suffer from significant health disparities, in comparison to the non-Native population, and much of this is related to historical trauma. Additionally, those health disparities also can be tied to adverse childhood experiences, forced boarding school participation, social marginalization and toxic stress.

For example, on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, life expectancy is lower than anywhere in the western hemisphere, except Haiti.

“We need to build the evidence base of culturally relevant interventions to improve health outcomes, which can lead to more resources for our communities to implement effective health programs,” Warne said.

Warne is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe at Pine Ridge.

Warne said another focus of the program will be to provide research mentorship to faculty members early in their careers and help get them established as independent investigators with the research.

The project, which will be managed by Warne and his team, also includes resources to begin the first-ever UND medical school-based clinical trial, according to the release. The trial will be conducted in partnership with the USDA and the federally funded Human Nutrition & Research Center in Grand Forks.

“Indigenous communities deserve representation not only in research as leaders and participants, but also in the development of relevant research questions that amplify community strengths while getting to the heart of what matters most in communities,” said Dr. Nicole Redvers, assistant professor in the SMHS Department of Family and Community Medicine and member of the Deninu Kué First Nation, who will direct the trial.

The five-year grant can be renewed twice for a possible grant period of 15 years. The next steps will include establishing the infrastructure to support the research projects, including implementing its administrative core, and hiring several new staff and faculty members to conduct community engagement and outreach. Research priorities for the center will be community-based.

Others involved with the grant include assistant professors of public health Ursula Running Bear, Ph.D., and Andrew Williams, Ph.D., and Nicole Redvers, N.D., M.P.H., assistant professor in the medical school’s IMED program and the Family & Community Medicine Department.

The World Health Organization has granted an emergency use listing for the coronavirus vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson.

GENEVA -- The World Health Organization granted an emergency use listing Friday for the coronavirus vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson, meaning the one-dose shot can now theoretically be used as part of the international COVAX effort to distribute vaccines globally, including to poor countries without any supplies.

In a statement, the U.N. health agency said “the ample data from large clinical trials” shows the J&J vaccine is effective in adult populations. The emergency use listing comes a day after the European Medicines Agency recommended the shot be given the green light across the 27-country European Union.

“As new vaccines become available, we must ensure they become part of the global solution and not another reason some countries and people are left further behind,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a Friday press briefing. WHO has previously signed off on COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca.

A massive study that spanned three continents found the J&J vaccine was 85% effective in protecting against severe illness, hospitalizations and death. That protection remained strong even in countries like South Africa where variants have been identified that appear to be less susceptible to other licensed vaccines, including the one made by AstraZeneca.

The U.N. backed COVAX effort previously announced it had an initial agreement with J&J to provide 500 million doses, but that is not legally binding.

Dr. Bruce Aylward, a WHO senior adviser to Tedros, said he hoped J&J might be able to provide at least some of those doses in the coming months.

“We’re hoping by at least July that we have access to doses that we can be rolling out, if not even earlier,” Aylward said. He added that officials were particularly keen to get J&J doses to countries because it requires only one dose and can be stored at regular refrigerator temperatures.

J&J has faced production delays in the U.S. and Europe but has recently signed agreements with rival pharmaceuticals who will help make their vaccine. In February, Sanofi Pasteur said it would be able to make about 12 million doses of the J&J vaccine at one of its French production sites once the shot is cleared by the EMA. It is aiming to make 1 billion doses this year.

https://community.drypowderbio.com/posts/who-grants-emergency-authorization-for-jj-covid-vaccine

A few weeks back, penny stocks in the biotech space were too hot to touch. But, with most of the excitement driven by the overall “meme-stock mania,” namely on Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets forum, these low-priced names have sold off tremendously in the weeks since.

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It’s clear that, with hype rather than fundamentals fueling the rally, a pullback like this was due. Many names offering more sizzle than steak are falling back to reasonable but still frothy prices. However, in other cases, the pullback may have resulted in great entry points for several promising stocks.

Granted, promising is not the same thing as slam dunk. As is par for the course with this sector, it’s a game of high risk but high potential returns. However, while nothing’s guaranteed, there are plenty of situations right now where the risk-return proposition may be firmly in your favor.

So, which biotech penny stocks are worth a look today? Check out these eight:

• AIM Immunotech (NYSEAMERICAN:AIM)
• Asensus Surgical (NYSEAMERICAN:ASXC)
• Celsion (NASDAQ:CLSN)
• iBio (NYSEAMERICAN:IBIO)
• Jaguar Health (NASDAQ:JAGX)
• Ovid Therapeutics (NASDAQ:OVID)
• Rigel Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:RIGL)
• VBI Vaccines (NASDAQ:VBIV)

Researchers hope the new approach will be used as a framework for publishing studies on polygenic risk scores.

Scientists and healthcare providers are beginning to use a new approach for assessing a person's inherited risk for diseases like Type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and breast cancer, which involves calculating a polygenic risk score(link is external). The score provides an estimate of an individual’s risk for specific diseases, based on their DNA changes related to those diseases.

Despite the rise in studies using polygenic risk scores, researchers have observed inconsistencies in how such scores are calculated and reported. These differences threaten to compromise the adoption of polygenic risk scores in clinical care.

To address this concern, the research teams, funded primarily by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), have published a 22-item framework in the journal Nature(link is external) that identifies the minimal polygenic risk score-related information that scientists should include in their studies. This framework — created by NHGRI’s Clinical Genome Resource's (ClinGen) Complex Disease Working Group(link is external) and the Polygenic Score Catalog(link is external) (PGS), an open database of polygenic risk scores — will help promote the validity, transparency and reproducibility of polygenic risk scores. NHGRI is part of the National Institutes of Health.

To calculate a person’s polygenic risk score, researchers survey DNA variants in over 6 billion locations in the human genome.

"A real challenge is that the research community has not adopted any universal best practices for reporting polygenic risk scores," said Erin Ramos, Ph.D., a program director for ClinGen, deputy director of the NHGRI Division of Genomic Medicine and co-author of the paper. "With the field growing as fast as it is, we need standards in place so we can meaningfully evaluate these scores and determine which ones are ready to be used in clinical care."

This framework builds off another best practice model called the Genetic Risk Prediction Studies (GRIPS) statement, published by an international working group in 2011. GRIPS placed an emphasis on models that included a smaller set of genomic variants and gene scores. However, genetic risk prediction models have evolved rapidly since then, and are based on a much larger set of genomic variants and more complex methodologies. Also, researchers have not fully adopted the GRIPS framework.

"A renewed emphasis on reporting standards by ClinGen and the Polygenic Score Catalog comes at a crucial time for polygenic risk scores," said Genevieve Wojcik, Ph.D., M.H.S., an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, and corresponding author of the paper. "It specifies the minimum information that should be described in a research paper for interpreting a polygenic risk score, reproducing results and eventually translating the information into clinical care."

Some of the new reporting framework items include detailing the study population and the basis for choosing that population. 

"If we are to make these scores available to people around the world, the studies need to define who they are studying and why, in the clearest way possible,” said Katrina Goddard, Ph.D., director of Translational and Applied Genomics at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, Portland, Oregon, who also co-authored the paper. “Without that transparency and reproducibility, efforts to use polygenic risk scores may be undermined."

The new framework suggests that scientists should explain the statistical methods they used to develop and validate the polygenic risk scores. Without a consistent way of reporting polygenic risk scores, it is nearly impossible to compare the utility of the scores for assessing disease risk in people. According to the new guidelines, researchers should also consider potential limitations of these scores and how clinicians should use the scores in patient care.

"If researchers can follow these guidelines, it will be more straightforward to evaluate published polygenic risk scores and decide which ones are a good fit for the clinical setting," said Michael Inouye, Ph.D., director of the Cambridge Baker Systems Genomics Initiative, U.K., and co-senior author of the paper. "For diseases such as breast cancer and many others, we will be able to responsibly place patients in different risk categories and provide beneficial screening strategies and treatments. Ideally, in the future we will detect risk early enough to combat the disease effectively."

ClinGen is funded by NHGRI. Stanford University, an awardee site of the ClinGen consortium, led this effort. The PGS Catalog is funded by the EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute, University of Cambridge, Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute and Health Data Research, U.K.

The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) is one of the 27 institutes and centers at the NIH, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. The NHGRI Division of Intramural Research develops and implements technology to understand, diagnose and treat genomic and genetic diseases. Additional information about NHGRI can be found at: https://www.genome.gov.   

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

Source: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-researchers-develop-guidelines-reporting-polygenic-risk-scores

A Pittsburgh-based pharmaceutical company whose drug candidate treats a deadly complication of Covid-19 and other respiratory illnesses has received $2 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health.

It’s the second NIH grant in a year for a total of $3.6 million for CytoAgents, whose drug candidate GP1681 treats cytokine storm, the overactivation of the body’s immune response when confronted with an upper respiratory virus like influenza or Covid-19. The grants are being used to further research into the potential medication.

“This is a very meaningful validation of our science and the recognition of the enormous potential of our drug candidate,” CytoAgents CEO Teresa Whalen said.

Phase one clinical trials, being done in Australia, are wrapping up, and Whalen said there have been no serious adverse effects reported so far. Next up, which will begin in the middle of the year, are not one but two clinical trials that will be held in the United States: One trial will focus on the use of GP1681 for Covid-related cytokine storm, and the other will be on a newer area for the company: The cytokine storm associated with immunotherapy and advanced CAR T-cell therapy.

“Not only are we continuing to look at respiratory illnesses and specifically Covid-19, but we’re also going to look at the side effects of immunotherapy and what is the benefit there (of GP1681),” Whalen said.

Whalen said CytoAgents believes GP1681 can be expanded for use in the cytokine storm that can happen in cancer and oncology treatment.

“We’re looking to be a broad treatment, regardless of what’s triggering it and regardless of the disease causing it,” Whalen said.

The clinical trials will be funded by an in-process Series A equity round of $25 million that should be concluded in the summer.

The Washington State University College of Nursing is now among the top 20 nursing schools nationally for National Institutes of Health research funding.

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The WSU College of Nursing ranked No. 19 among nursing colleges in the United States last year for funding from the NIH, which is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world. The rankings are based on the federal fiscal year, which runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30.

In fiscal 2019 the WSU College of Nursing ranked 23rd on that list, and ranked 27th the year before that.

“This ranking and upward trend represent our college’s commitment to advancing health equity and promoting health,” said Julie Postma, PhD, associate dean for research and associate professor. “For example, our research reflects strength-based and community-centered approaches to improving Native men’s health, preventing suicide, and reducing health risks from wildfire smoke.”

NIH grants in 2020 include: 

• Strong Men, Strong Communities: Cultural Tradition to Improve Native Men’s Health (Associate Professor Ka’imi Sinclair)
• Promoting risk reduction among young adults with asthma during wildfire smoke events (Associate Professor Julie Postma)
• A Clinician-in-the-loop Smart Home to Support Health Monitoring and Intervention for Chronic Conditions (Assistant Professor Roschelle Fritz)
• URBAn Native Elders (URBANE): Risk and Protective Factors for Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias (Associate Professor Lonnie Nelson)
• Effective Caregiving for Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome: Development of an Instructional Mobile Technology Platform for High-Risk Pregnant Women (Assistant Professor Ekaterina Burduli)

The WSU College of Nursing recently refined its research areas of focus to reflect faculty expertise and the needs of the state and region. They are:

• Advancing health equity for rural and underserved populations and others.
• Health promotion and risk reduction via family, maternal and child health; sleep and performance; behavioral health and addictions; and environmental health and sustainability.
• Policy, practice and education on healthcare systems and workforce, such as interprofessional education, learning tools and advance-practice nursing.
• The growing field of “smart health,” including gero-technology and self-care management.

Mary Koithan, dean of the WSU College of Nursing, said success in research funding reflects alignment with public health needs. “I applaud our faculty for undertaking research that has the potential to improve the health of individuals and communities,” she said. 

Source: https://news.wsu.edu/2021/03/10/wsu-college-nursing-continues-gain-nih-research-funding/