COLUMBUS - New research funds accepted Friday (10/6) by The Ohio State University Board of Trustees will enable the university to pursue new frontiers in technology and cancer research among numerous other projects. Trustees accepted 239 new research contracts and grants for a total of $24.1 million awarded to the university during August.

The Technology Enhanced Teaching and Learning Implementation Project, funded by a $387,000 grant from the Office of Post-secondary Education, allows Evelyn Freeman, professor of teaching and learning, and Suzanne Damarin, professor of education policy and leadership, to address the "digital divide" - the gap between students with access to technology and those without. The Columbus Public Schools, Columbus Education Association and IBM Inc. will work with the College of Education to provide faculty members and professional teachers opportunities to incorporate technology into teacher training courses and student field experiences.

On the medical front, Young C. Lin, professor of veterinary biosciences, and his research group are conducting a project to evaluate the potential utility of gossypol (GP), a compound found in cottonseed oil, as a dietary chemo-preventive agent for breast cancer. Research findings have shown the natural form of GP in the oil to be more potent than the chemically purified pharmaceutical form. Funded by a $330,000 grant from the Army Medical Command, the project will study whether the consumption of foods containing cottonseed oil can provide sufficient GP to achieve desired biological effects without toxicity.

Another Army Medical Command grant of $437,000 is funding a study by Dr. Charis Eng, associate professor of internal medicine, and her colleagues at Ohio State's Comprehensive Cancer Center, on the PTEN gene, a tumor suppressor gene. A PTEN mutation causes Cowden Syndrome, an under-diagnosed hereditary cancer syndrome, and the Ohio State researchers are looking for the gene's effect in non-inherited cancers. If the molecular genetic study determines that the PTEN gene is a new breast and thyroid cancer gene, then early detection screening for the gene could provide patients with a greater chance for survival.

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