“This was on my bucket list as a professional. It’s really magic,” shares Stephanie Watts, Ph.D., a leading researcher at the College of Osteopathic Medicine in the field of vascular research.

Watts led an interdisciplinary team of researchers and professionals at MSU to pull together a successful NIH application in 2021—a feat that required over four years of intensive work. In December 2021, the team received the exciting notification of a five-year, $13.5 million program project grant award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health to study Perivascular Adipose Tissue (PVAT) as a Central Integrator of Vascular Health.

This grant will greatly expand the capacity of Watts’ team to build on work already underway.

The Program Project Grant (PPG) involves four projects that will explore different mechanisms of PVAT, a tissue essential to normal functioning of blood vessels. Each project will be led by a different Principal Investigator.

“The PPG centers different brains with different perspectives and techniques around the same work/question,” explains Watts.

To read more about Stephanie Watts and her research projects, visit com.msu.edu