Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: [email protected]
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., July 2, 2014—The National Institutes of Health has awarded Williams College biology professor Steven Swoap a three-year, $409,796 grant to study therapeutic hypothermia and the molecular, biochemical, and physiological approaches to torpor, a state of reduced physiological activity, as in hibernation.
For the last decade, emergency room doctors have used therapeutic hypothermia in patients experiencing crises such as heart attack or stroke. Cooling the body allows all of its actions to slow down, which in turn allows it to suffer less neurological damage and heal more quickly after the crisis has passed.
“The main problem with therapeutic hypothermia,” Swoap says, “is that the body naturally fights to bring its temperature back up, mainly by shivering.” The goal of the project is to find a way to lower the body’s internal thermostat during an emergency situation without using medicine to suppress shivering. “Imagine wanting to keep a house cold in the winter,” Swoap says. “The medicines we currently use to suppress shivering can be compared to severing the gas line in the house to keep the heat from turning on.”
To find out if there is a way to induce a more natural state of torpor during a medical crisis—to simply lower the cold house’s thermostat to keep it cold—Swoap is studying mice. Mice go into the state of torpor in the face of calorie deficit and cold, and come out of it when food returns or temperatures rise.
Swoap will lead a group of undergraduate researchers during the three-year project. “This project gives undergraduates the opportunity to design and implement their own experiments,” Swoap says. Those experiments are under way in his lab, where three members of the class of 2017—Amelia Hidalgo, Intekhab Hossain, and Maria Vicent-Allende—are spending the summer conducting research and experiments.
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Founded in 1793, Williams College is the second-oldest institution of higher learning in Massachusetts. The college’s 2,000 students are taught by a faculty noted for the quality of their teaching and research, and the achievement of academic goals includes active participation of students with faculty in their research. Students’ educational experience is enriched by the residential campus environment in Williamstown, Mass., which provides a host of opportunities for interaction with one another and with faculty beyond the classroom. Admission decisions on U.S. applicants are made regardless of a student’s financial ability, and the college provides grants and other assistance to meet the demonstrated needs of all who are admitted.
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Published July 2, 2014
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