The McLaughlin Research Institute, based in Great Falls, has received a $13.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to launch the Center for Integrated Biomedical and Rural Health Research and expand their research enterprise over the next five years.

McLaughlin announced the award on Feb. 5 and Dr. Renee Reijo Pera, director, is the principal investigator under the grant.

The new research center is part of the NIH Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence nationwide network and is the first center of excellence grant to be awarded outside the state’s major universities in Bozeman and Missoula, according to a McLaughlin release.

The centers are funded through three competitive phases of five years each.

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McLaughlin’s is a first phase award and will be used to strengthen biomedical research infrastructure outside the traditional university system to provide opportunity and solutions to rural Montanans, according to the institute’s release.

“The focus on integrated biomedical and rural health research will enable recruitment of additional healthcare researchers and build cohesiveness around a common goal to address rural health in a multi-disciplinary fashion that includes basic, translational, and clinical studies,” according to McLaughlin’s release.

The center at McLaughlin is a collaboration between faculty in the established partnership with Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine-Montana and seeks to provide research opportunities and participation in clinical trials for Montanans, according to McLaughlin.

The center will also recruit additional healthcare researchers and support the expansion of research infrastructure with initial projects focused on neurological diseases, according to McLaughlin.

The projects are led by Dr. Tiffany Hensley-McBain, Dr. Mikael Klingeborn, Dr. Moses Leavens and Dr. Andrea Grindeland.

They’ll focus on Alzheimer’s disease, age-related macular degeneration, Parkinson’s disease and chronic wasting disease.

In addition, Dr. Teresa Gunn will establish a core facility for Montana that is focused on gene editing and molecular analysis of models of human disease, according to McLaughlin’s release.

Reijo Pera, McLaughlin’s director, said the grant was made possible by other financial contributions that recruited new researchers.

She said a $5 million gift from Drs. Ann Tsukamoto-Weissman and Irv Weissman helped secure the new federal grant.

“NIH Centers of Excellence grants are very difficult to obtain. This is fantastic news and an awesome accomplishment that bodes well for the biomedical research enterprise in Great Falls and serves as a model for other rural states. The quality of science and leadership at the McLaughlin Research Institute is nationally recognized by this award,” Irv Weissman said in the release.

He grew up in Great Falls and was McLaughlin’s first intern in 1956 under the founding director. He’s now the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor of Clinical Investigation in Cancer Research at Stanford University and founder of several successful biomedical startup companies worth billions of dollars, according to McLaughlin.

The grant also includes faculty and students at Touro’s Great Falls campus through new research opportunities with an emphasis on medicine in underserved communities, according to McLaughlin.