Anjon Audhya wants to help you see things clearly.
That’s no great surprise — at least from a literal standpoint. As a researcher, the professor of biomolecular chemistry runs a lab that focuses on optical imaging.
But figuratively, he wants you to clearly see the importance of federal research funding. Audhya is the senior associate dean for basic research, biotechnology, and graduate studies in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. When universities talk about basic research, they don’t mean elementary or low-level work. They mean studies where the goal is to gain new knowledge, to answer fundamental questions, rather than, say, clinical trials, which test the efficacy of a particular treatment.
Pharmaceutical companies may invest in clinical trials, in hopes of finding a drug they can sell. But basic science usually relies on government grants, because no one knows how, or even whether, the studies could lead to a product. Yet the discoveries made through basic science underlie the drugs that will cure diseases in the future.
“The role of the [National Institutes of Health] in supporting basic science and foundational research is absolutely critical to be able to provide an understanding of how a therapeutic ultimately works or doesn’t work in a patient population,” Audhya says. “As an academic institution, one of our major goals is to identify the molecular pathways that should be targeted for disease intervention and then partner with others to bring treatments to the clinic.”
On April 15, 2025, Audhya will appear on the UW Now Live to talk about the importance of federal research grants and how the Trump administration’s proposed limits may hold back the effort to find treatments for diseases such as ALS and Alzheimer’s.
My Chief Area of Research Is:
Light-sheet microscopes, confocal microscopes, super-resolution imaging — that’s sort of my bread and butter — using these tools to make fundamental discoveries about how neurons survive, often times for your entire lifetime. I previously led the optical imaging core facility in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. The goal of the facility is to provide the infrastructure to support the optical imaging need for researchers. When I departed from my role as director in 2021, we had over 200 different scientists using that core facility for research, supporting their ability to publish manuscript and their grant applications.
On the UW Now Live, I’ll Talk About:
The bulk of my support comes from the federal government. Ultimately [basic science] provides an understanding of how a therapeutic works or doesn’t. The idea of going from basic science to clinical translation would make for a fantastic discussion.
If There’s One Thing Viewers Should Remember, It’s:
I would love to get across that UW–Madison is a mecca for doing this type of research. We have actually been talking extensively with our incoming dean about creating a neurodegenerative disease center or a neuroscience institute so that we can bring together the spectrum of faculty we have, irrespective of department affiliation, going from basic research all the way through to clinical and translational implementation of our findings.
To Get Smart Fast, See:
There are many articles in Science and Nature about the importance of fundamental or basic science. Academic institutions speak very highly of the importance of basic science and basic research to ultimately discovering cures for various diseases. Those are the best venues.
