Maine group gets $19.4M grant for biomedical research and training

A consortium of 17 Maine colleges, universities and research institutes has been awarded a $19.4 million federal grant for research and training in the field of biomedicine.

Dubbed the Maine IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (Maine INBRE — “IDeA” is short for Institutional Development Award), the group, led by MDI Biological Laboratory, supports early-career bioscience faculty in Maine with research grants, staff, lab equipment and other resources they need to compete for federal grants.

The group also invests in shared, state-of-the-art science infrastructure at the member institutions, including advanced gene editing, data science systems and 3D microscopy.

The grant comes from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

The federal institute previously awarded the Maine INBRE consortium a five-year, $18 million grant in 2019. The new grant renews the group’s funding for five more years and enlarges its scope to a total of 17 institutions.

New members of Maine INBRE include the University of Southern Maine, the MaineHealth Institute for Research and the University of Maine at Augusta.

Past members include the University of Maine, UMaine Honors College, UMaine system campuses in Fort Kent, Presque Isle, Farmington and Machias, Southern Maine Community College, College of the Atlantic, the University of New England, Colby, Bates and Bowdoin colleges, The Jackson Laboratory and MDI Bio Lab.

The program so far has invested more than $87 million in Maine. Early-career faculty it has supported have been awarded more than $100 million more in research grants, according to MDI Bio Lab.

Additionally, 90 percent of INBRE undergraduates went on to higher education and careers in health-related fields, and 21 percent did so in Maine. In the last five years, MDI Bio Lab said, the number of science majors at member schools has increased by 65 percent.