Scientist Wins NIH’s Prestigious Pioneer Award

Cheng Chi Lee, Ph.D., associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston, is the first scientist in the Texas Medical Center to receive a National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award.

Cheng Chi Lee, Ph.D.

Lee is one of only 13 to receive a 2006 Pioneer Award and was selected from a pool of 465 applicants. As an awardee, Lee will receive $2.5 million in direct costs over five years to further his research.

Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced winners Sept. 19 during a symposium in Bethesda, Md.

“The 2006 Pioneer Award recipients are a diverse group of forward-thinking scientists whose work could transform medical research,” Zerhouni said. “The awards will give them the intellectual freedom to pursue exciting research directions and opportunities in a range of scientific areas, from computational biology to immunology, stem cell biology, nanotechnology and drug development.”

The award program, now in its third year, is a key component of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research. The program supports exceptionally creative scientists who take highly innovative approaches to major challenges in biomedical research.

The award will allow Lee to refine technologies for the suspended animation of non-hibernating mammals.

Already, Lee has discovered a molecular switch in mice that shifts the body’s fuel consumption and induces a state of torpor, which is similar to hibernation, allowing body temperature to drop towards environmental temperature.

The molecule, known as five prime adenosine monophosphate, could be the key to one day inducing suspended animation or hibernation in humans. “This could have enormous medical applications in treatment for brain injury, heart attacks and other diseases and injuries,” Lee said.

Rodney E. Kellems, Ph.D., professor and chairman of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, said the Pioneer Award recognizes Lee’s enormous research contributions and tremendous research potential.

“For nearly two decades Dr. Lee has made significant and seminal contributions to human genetics and circadian biology. Very few individuals have the energy and creative talent to function at the forefront of scientific research for this length of time,” Kellems said. “Dr. Lee’s creativity is sustained by a passion for science and an appetite for research discovery that shows no sign of abatement.”

Jerry S. Wolinsky, M.D., professor and interim dean of the UT Medical School at Houston, said the Pioneer Award program acknowledges and supports the novel medical research being conducted by some of the nation’s most inventive scientists.

“It is wonderful to know that we are recruiting young scientists at the UT Medical School who are capable of pushing the frontiers of medical research forward,” Wolinsky said.

Lee earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1986 at the University of Otago in New Zealand. He moved to Houston that same year to do a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine. In 2003, he joined the faculty at the UT Medical School.

By Meredith Raine, Institutional Advancement