UM supports
annual HeartWalk
to raise money, awareness
For the second year running, UM was a major sponsor of the Missoula
HeartWalk to raise money to fight and awareness about heart disease and stroke. President
George Dennison and wife Jane, a heart disease survivor, led a number of UM teams in the
fund-raising walk around Southgate Mall.
UM also donated the grand prizes to the top two community teams that raised the most
money. The first-place team won a five-course, gourmet heart-healthy meal prepared by
University executive chef Tom Siegel, a heart attack survivor himself. The second-place
finishers will be the guests of the Dennisons in the President's Box at an upcoming Lady
Griz basketball game. Individual prizes of Grizzly logowear were provided by the UM Alumni
Association, Grizzly Athletics and the Grizzly Athletic Association.
Over the years UM scientists have been generously supported by American Heart
Association research grants from both the local, Northwest affiliate chapter and the
national grant program. For example, this year two new grants were received by young UM
scientists with an award of $104,000 over the next two years.
Taren Grass, a doctoral student from Box Elder who is training in Associate Professor
Doug Coffin's pharmaceutical sciences lab, is using her grant to develop ways to stimulate
new blood vessels to grow in areas of the heart that are damaged by a heart attack,
thereby allowing a faster recovery of the damaged tissue.
Pakamas Tongcharoensirikul, postdoctoral student training in Professor Chuck Thompson's
lab, is using her grant to study an important way in which stroke can cause brain damage.
The research implicates a brain chemical called glutamate in causing brain cell death when
released in excessive amounts. She is seeking to synthesize a whole class of chemicals
that inhibit the release of excessive glutamate. Hopefully, if such chemicals could be
administered in a timely fashion, they would minimize or possibly reverse the brain damage
suffered in stroke.
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