Through a settlement brokered by the State of Nevada Attorney General's Office, approximately $3.8 million will be made available to the University of Nevada School of Medicine for research projects aimed at improving women's health in Nevada. This was announced in a November 2, 2015 release from University of Nevada-Reno’s Nevada Today, and authored by Anne McMillin. According to this release, the State of Nevada obtained the funds in a settlement with pharmaceutical companies Wyeth, Pfizer, and Pharmacia & Upjohn relating to claims regarding post-menopausal hormone therapy products. The funds will be distributed by the Attorney General's Office over a five-year period ending in 2019, with half the available research funds going to School of Medicine faculty in Reno and Las Vegas and the other half going to the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada. Through the process of submitting of grant proposals, School of Medicine faculty members are able to access settlement funds to support research studies on women's health. In Reno, the School of Medicine's Pharmacology Department is heavily involved in research relating to women's health. The state funding has already helped Iain Buxton, Pharm. D., Chair of the Pharmacology Department, purchase a super-resolution microscope, the first of its kind for Nevada. This microscope enables scientists to study sub-cellular structures in the greatest detail using fluorescence imaging. Dr. Buxton is the principal investigator on research projects involving breast cancer and also pre-term birth at the School of Medicine. In a Nevada KTVN Channel 2 televison report on this new women’s health research funding from the State, it was noted that researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno have already made some significant strides into understanding breast cancer and how it metastasizes.
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