VCU steps up in state push for research collaboration with eye for commerce

July 11, 2018

Michael Martz | Richmond Times-Dispatch

Virginia Commonwealth University is emerging as a player in two major state economic development initiatives aimed at collaborative research among major colleges and universities to produce technologies that could save lives and generate new jobs.

VCU has reached agreement with Inova Health Systems to hire high-level research faculty who would work both for the university and the Genomics & Bioinformatics Research Institute soon under construction — with $20 million in state support — at the Inova Center for Personalized Health in Fairfax County. The university’s financial contribution to recruiting “eminent scholars” for the project remains under negotiation.

The project would use research in the genetic links to addiction to inform and improve treatment of people recovering from opioid overdoses, which have become epidemic in Virginia and across the country.

“The more we can collaborate on that, the more we can have an impact on the epidemic,” said Dr. Gerry Moeller, VCU division chair of addiction psychiatry and director of VCU’s Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research and of the Institute for Drug and Alcohol Studies. <more>