MEDICAL SCHOOL GRANT

THE National Science Foundation has awarded $40,500 over a three-year period to the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Dartmouth Medical School for research on the nature and control of ciliary motion. Cilia, microscopic hairlike structures, line the inside of the nose, sinuses, lower respiratory tract and Fallopian tubes of humans. They wave back and forth under their own power continuously - sometimes as rapidly as 30 times a second. In the nose and respiratory tract this motion causes a thin blanket of mucus to be propelled into the back of the throat and so helps to protect the body from infection and harmful dusts. The Medical School research is concerned with factors, that cause this ciliary motion and how it can be controlled by drugs, chemicals and other means. The research program, directed by Dr. Robert Gosselin, Professor of Pharmacology, was started five years ago. It is also supported by grants from the Public Health Service, the Hitchcock Foundation, and the American Medical Association.