Houston has received a $5 million grant from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund

Houston Business Journal - by Monica Perin Reporter

The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston has received a $5 million grant from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund to create a trauma research center.

The Center for Transitional Injury Research will be headed by Dr. John Holcomb, a U.S. Army trauma surgeon. The ETF funds will be used to recruit leading scientists and surgeons in trauma care and new medical technologies.

The grant was announced in Houston on Tuesday by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.

Besides the ETF grant, an additional $13 million has been committed by UTHSC, Memorial Hermann Hospital System and the University of Texas System Medical Foundation to help establish the new research center.

Holcomb, 48, has headed the Army's Institute of Surgical Research at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio since 2001.

Under Holcomb's leadership Army surgeons have stepped up their use of controversial blood-clotting drugs to treat severe bleeding on the battlefield. Holcomb also led a redesign of the Army's system for transporting wounded soldiers from the battlefield to hospitals.

Injury-induced trauma is the third leading cause of death in the U.S., behind heart disease and cancer, and results in 160,000 deaths nationally and 16,000 in Texas annually, according to the National Trauma Institute.