UF announced Tuesday it will receive a five-year, $26 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to cut the time it takes for scientific breakthroughs to become incorporated into medical practices.
The money will fund research, the translation of scientific discoveries into medical applications and the marketing of those applications.
UF has received larger grants in the past, but the prestige is what makes this grant significant, said Win Phillips, UF's vice president for research.
"The important thing is the acknowledgement that UF is one of the top health research centers in the nation," Phillips said.
"It's clearly one of the most important events in the history of the University of Florida."
UF is the only university in Florida to get the grant. It will be one of 60 institutions to have won when the grants are given out by 2012.
The grant encompasses 12 of UF's 16 colleges, as well as the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and its extension offices across the state, the Shands HealthCare system and the North Florida/South Georgia Veterans Affairs Health System.
The colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Dentistry and Veterinary Medicine in addition to other colleges like journalism and Fine Arts will receive support from the grant.
UF officials said the grant indicates the university has strong programs in many different fields.
Peter Stacpoole, director of UF's Clinical and Translational Science Institute, said one example of how UF will use the money is to foster research on genetic diseases and bring discoveries to the marketplace more efficiently.
David Guzick, former dean of the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry in New York, said his school used a similar grant from the NIH in 2006 to translate research on cervical cancer into a widely adopted vaccine.
Not only will the grant help UF, Guzick said, but the potential discoveries and resulting patents will likely create local jobs and bring in more revenue to the state as well as UF.
"It provides an amplifier effect," he said.
