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2-20-08

Media Release

LPI Research Progress Recognized With $6 Million NIH Grant

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Groundbreaking natural health research conducted by the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University has been recognized with a new five-year, $6 million grant from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

This support by NCCAM, an agency of the National Institutes of Health, will allow the OSU institute to build on some fundamental findings in the past five years, when it was one of the first two research organizations in the nation – along with Harvard University – to be designated as a center of excellence for research on complementary and alternative medicine.

“The Linus Pauling Institute has established itself as a national and international leader in research and education on micronutrients and antioxidants,” said Balz Frei, professor and director of the institute. “Our research is focused on ‘healthspan,’ with the goal of maximizing the period of a person’s life where they are generally healthy, and free of suffering and chronic illness.”

Some promising findings in recent years have pointed toward new ways to help prevent or treat heart disease, cancer, slow the aging process and generally improve health through diet, lifestyle and complementary medical approaches, including use of dietary supplements.

In recent years, some of the peer-reviewed, published findings of LPI scientists include:

• Laboratory studies concluded that supplements of lipoic acid can help address the risk factors for heart disease and also reduce weight gain;

• Researchers suggested that pregnant and nursing women who eat generous amounts of cruciferous vegetables could help protect their children from cancer, both as infants and later in life;

• LPI experts developed a new technique to let them visualize and precisely measure a key oxidant in cells, providing an important breakthrough to speed research on everything from Lou Gehrig’s Disease to heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and aging;

• An emerging “epigenetic” view of cancer concluded that one of the ways diet may help prevent or treat cancer is through its impact on gene expression – influencing which genes are turned “on” or “off”;

• A fundamental mechanism was identified that causes aging blood vessels to lose their elasticity – a literal “hardening of the arteries” that is often a prelude to high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease;

• Studies showed how vitamin E disappears more quickly in smokers than in non-smokers - findings that may help explain how smoking causes cancer and heart disease.

These findings, however, are just the beginning of promising new approaches to disease prevention and treatment, LPI experts say. In future years, some of the laboratory findings with micronutrients and phytochemicals – chemicals naturally found in fruits and vegetables – will increasingly move to human clinical trials to demonstrate their efficacy.

In particular, LPI researchers plan to use the new grant to work with experts at the Oregon Health & Science University on clinical testing of lipoic acid supplements, which they believe may be able to reduce risk factors for atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease in humans.

In related work, scientists will also determine whether the compound can improve resistance to toxins in aging, and explore its role in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

“The results from our previous studies have led to a major shift in how we understand the function of natural antioxidants in the body,” Frei said. “They not only scavenge free radicals and prevent oxidative damage, but also appear to have a role in reversing cell and tissue dysfunction. There may be ways to re-set these biological functions to normal, healthy levels, and substantially improve the body’s resistance to chronic disease and aging.”

The Linus Pauling Institute was first begun by Linus Pauling, a two-time Nobel laureate and Oregon State University alumnus. It moved to OSU in 1996, and since then its staff has expanded from 10 to more than 60 people, including 11 principal investigators, who attracted more than $5 million in external funding from NIH last year. LPI sponsors the biennial “Diet and Optimum Health” conference that routinely attracts the world’s leading researchers in this field of study, and it also awards the $50,000 Linus Pauling Institute Prize for Health Research.

Its Micronutrient Information Center is visited by tens of thousands of people every month, and construction is planned to start next year on the new $62.5 million Linus Pauling Science Center, one of the most ambitious projects in OSU history.

About the Linus Pauling Institute: The Linus Pauling Institute at OSU is a world leader in the study of micronutrients and their role in promoting optimum health or preventing and treating disease. Major areas of research include heart disease, cancer, aging and neurodegenerative disease.