DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application responds to RFA-OD-09-005, "Recovery Act Limited Competition: Supporting New Faculty Recruitment to Enhance Research Resources through Biomedical Research Core Centers (P30). We propose to hire a new Assistant Professor in the area of Stem Cell Research, with a specific interest in either Neurological Stem Cell Biology or Mesenchymal Stem Cell Biology as an Investigator in the San Antonio Institute for Cellular and Molecular Primatology (SAICMP), a Biomedical Core Center, and the Department of Biology at UTSA, as a tenure-track Assistant Professor. UTSA is an Eligible Institution under the general guidelines of this RFA, and is a specifically targeted institution for this RFA as an Hispanic-Serving Institution. The mission of the SAICMP is to promote interactive research utilizing primate and other relevant model systems to investigate the basic biology of stem cells and their differentiated derivatives, and especially to optimize and test protocols for potential therapeutic application in human patients. Past experiences involving the premature application of either gene therapy or more recent stem-cell-based therapeutic applications to human patients have demonstrated the dangers of adapting these protocols to humans prior to ensuring their efficacy and safety by pre-clinical testing in relevant animal model systems. We define an excellent opportunity for a new hire at the Assistant Professor (tenure-track) level, with very strong institutional support and potential for development of a highly successful career in academia and biomedical research. We commit extensive institutional support in terms of ongoing state-supported salary, individual laboratory space, a tenure-track position, access to all resources afforded to all members of the SAICMP, the Department of Biology faculty, and/or the College of Sciences faculty at UTSA, and the opportunity to join a unique team of stem cell biologists working with a unique, but highly relevant nonhuman primate model for studies of stem-cell-based therapeutic approaches. Thus, this application is responsive to the RFA by seeking funds that will allow the creation of a position (job) that will not otherwise be made available during the coming year.

This application is relevant to the mission of the NIGMS because the funds will contribute to our overall goal to establish the baboon as a clinically relevant, nonhuman primate model system for developing, testing and optimizing protocols for novel stem-cell-based therapeutic approaches to be applied to the treatment of heretofore intractable diseases or debilitations.