The AGA Research Foundation plays an important role in medical research by providing grants to young scientists at a critical time in their career. The foundation’s research program has had a significant impact on digestive disease research since 1984 providing more than $40 million in research grants to more than 750 scientists.
Foundation Grant recipients:
Dr. Shehzad Z. Sheikh
• Shehzad Z. Sheikh, M.D., assistant professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is a 2012 AGA Research Scholar Award Recipient. "The impact of the AGA Research Scholar Award on my career has been very significant, but I think what’s more important, and what we tend to lose perspective over, is that this is for our patients. Our patients look to us to help find a cure for their disease. IBD is a debilitating disease. It affects our patients day in, day out. I see them suffer silently on a daily basis. Until our politicians get their priorities correct, sources like the AGA Research Foundation are absolutely critical in maintaining viable research and advancing our goal to find a cure for IBD."
Dr. Claudia D. Andl
• Claudia D. Andl, Ph.D., assistant professor of surgery and cancer biology at Vanderbilt University, is a 2006 AGA Research Scholar Award Recipient. "I received the Research Scholar Award from the AGA Research Foundation in 2006 and I’m eternally grateful for this honor because it really set the stage for me as an independent investigator in my research program on cell adhesion molecules in esophageal cancer. With the economic downturn, support from the AGA Research Foundation is more important than ever. The clinicians, the researchers, everybody is working together to keep the research cutting edge so that we can help our patients. Without donating to the AGA Research Foundation, a lot of this research will not be happening anymore."
Dr. John E. Pandolfino
• John Pandolfino, M.D., AGAF, professor in medicine at Northwestern University, is a 2007 AGA–Castell Esophageal Clinical Research Award Recipient. "Unlike other subspecialties, gastroenterology and hepatology seem to have a little bit less funding available through the NIH and, more importantly, there’s the lure of private practice that really is dragging and pulling many of our young faculty away from research. I think some of the things that suffer when we lose these young faculty is that they come up with some of these new ideas. They’re seeing things for the very first time; they really break the paradigms that we’re set in as older and mid-level investigators. So if we don’t have these young investigators to challenge us, and look at things in a different way, the subspecialty won’t advance."
With your support, we are building a community of researchers whose work serves the greater community and benefits all our patients. Please support young researchers in gastroenterology and hepatology through a tax-deductible gift to the AGA Research Foundation. Donate today at www.gastro.org/contribute.
