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Children's Health Research Center Receives $11.6 Million Grant

The Children’s Health Research Center at Sanford Research in Sioux Falls has received an 11.6 million dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health. The money will come over a 5 year period and will support new projects and research.

The Children’s Health Research Center has been with Sanford Research since 2009. It is also associated with the University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine.

Peter Vitiello is with the Children’s Health Research Center.

"The NIH is making a commitment to the research we’re doing here and it’s really hard and difficult to get that sort of commitment in today’s climate where there’s less dollars to go around," says Vitiello. "So we feel like this is a very firm justification and validation of how we went about building our research center here."

Vitiello says the grant’s purpose is to fund children’s research as well as to promote faculty training. He says it allows scientists a platform to conduct their work while they strive to become independently funded.

"This is a significant step towards where we want to go. If everything works out properly all the projects that are supported by this training grant should be able to grow and develop and be independently funded so imagine those are taken care of and then the money is redirected toward new projects to continue that growth," says Vitiello. "I think it’s going to set a firm baseline of what we expect our funding to be at and it’s going to allow it to only grow from here."

Vitiello says Children’s Health has the ability to foster education of medical, graduate and post-graduate students in their laboratories.