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Doctor and YSU professor awarded grant for drug study
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
A pharmaceutical company awarded a $70,000 grant to a Canfield physician and a Youngstown State University professor for a clinical drug study — a first for the university.
“This is the first time YSU has participated in a clinical drug study,” Martin Abraham, interim provost and vice president for academic affairs, said at a Wednesday news conference.
The study will evaluate the effect of drug treatment on patients with chronic kidney disease who have been on dialysis for less than five years.
Abraham said the grant and YSU’s participating in the study is an indication of YSU’s continued evolution as a research university.
The grant from Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, a global company, was awarded to Dr. Erdal Sarac, medical director at the Centers for Dialysis Care in Canfield, and Jane Wetzel, a YSU associate professor of physical therapy.
The study will use the drug H.P. Acthar Gel to determine its effect on kidney function, nutritional status, quality of life and physical performance for people with end-stage renal disease.
Dr. Sarac said people with the disease have a high mortality rate and bad kidney function, and nutrition and physical performance play a role.
The goal is for the drug to reduce those risks.
“I’m excited to have the opportunity to perform research here at this university that I have grown to love,” said Wetzel, who came to YSU in 2009.
She said the project involved a lot of collaboration between many people at YSU and at St. Elizabeth Health Center in Youngstown.
“One of the things we’re all hoping is that we help people with kidney disease,” Wetzel said.
Dr. Sarac initiated the clinical study, which grew out of research he conducted with Wetzel last year. That research was funded by a $5,000 grant from the Medical Research Council at St. E’s.
Suzanne Giuffre, associate professor of physical therapy, and Rachael Pohle-Krauza, associate professor of human ecology, are also involved in the study.
Both said the research last year and what’s upcoming involves students, too.
Ryan Guy of Columbiana is one of the students who participated last year, and he hopes to be involved with the upcoming research. Guy, an exercise-science major, will graduate this year but hopes to pursue his doctorate in physical therapy at YSU. He also earned a physical-therapy assistant license from Kent State University at East Liverpool.
The previous study gave him experience with data sets. He’s hoping the new experience will give him more experience with people who are research subjects, talking to them and understanding what they’re going through. He has a personal interest in it as well.
“My grandma is about to go into dialysis,” he said.