For the more than 350,000 Americans that experience an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest each year, less than 1 in 10 of those treated will survive with good neurologic function.

The Michigan Resuscitation Innovation and Science Enterprise (M-RISE) is a new research program with the mission to discover, translate and implement innovative therapies focused on preventing brain damage caused by cardiac arrest.

“Survival for these patients decreases with every minute there is a delay in therapy,” says Robert Neumar, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair of emergency medicine at Michigan Medicine and M-RISE Director. “Many patients who have their heart restarted will subsequently die from severe brain damage, and many who do survive to hospital discharge do not return to their pre-arrest function due to brain injury.”

M-RISE includes three projects, a postdoctoral training program and an institution collaborator. The three research projects are divided into a basic, clinical and population science focus and build upon work performed in the previous project – a translation research model.

M-RISE is housed at Michigan Medicine under the Max Harry Weil Institute for Critical Care Research and Innovation.

“M-RISE was designed to advance the AHA mission of being a relentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives.”

— Dr. Robert Neumar, M-RISE Director

M-RISE at the Weil Institute

How Weil Makes An Idea A Reality

Written by Meagan Ramsey, MCIRCC Proposal Development Unit Manager

Dr. Neumar contacted the Weil Institute Proposal Development team in early October 2018 when he learned that the AHA opened their call for the Arrhythmias and Sudden Cardiac Death Strategically Focused Research Network, which is a large, complex, team science funding opportunity. By the end of October, we had carefully reviewed AHA’s documentation to begin planning the submission. Kevin Ward, M.D., director of the Weil Institute and a professor of emergency medicine and biomedical engineering at Michigan Medicine, and I worked with Dr. Neumar to identify a competitive team for M-RISE, and we set up a series of team meetings to keep us on track throughout the grant development process.

The Proposal Development team became an integral part of the proposal team, and we contributed by ensuring strong alignment with AHA’s requirements and vision; developing writing timelines, checklists, and templates; facilitating team meetings to help the group make key decisions collectively; collaborating with the lead grants administrators; and identifying additional U-M grant development resources. We also helped draft both technical and non-technical proposal documents, gathered support files including over 60 letters of support and biosketches, worked with Weil’s Marketing team on over 20 high-quality figures, and provided substantive editing on all technical portions of the proposal to ensure we had a clear and competitive grant submission. The whole team worked extremely hard between November 2018 to early February 2019 when we submitted the full proposal.

By mid-April, AHA contacted Dr. Neumar with news that the team had been selected to move on to the next round, which was a Reverse Site Visit. Over the next month, the Proposal Development team worked with the M-RISE team to plan their presentation (again in alignment with AHA’s requirements and vision), create slides in collaboration with Weil Institute marketing, and coordinate mock review sessions for the team to practice and refine their presentation. We were thrilled to learn that M-RISE was funded—their passion for this work could not be clearer, and their highly innovative vision and translational, multidisciplinary approach to prevent brain damage caused by out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is a shining example of everything that the Weil Institute was designed for.

Moving Forward, Together

M-RISE utilized Weil’s Proposal Development and Marketing teams to write and submit the initial proposal and presentation for funding and will continue to benefit from working with Weil, having access to more than 200 MCIRCC members - researchers, scientists, and clinicians dedicated to finding innovative solutions in critical care.

“We’re thrilled to have been able to leverage Weil’s infrastructure to successfully compete for this award and to add the M-RISE research program to our institute’s work,” says Dr. Kevin Ward. “With such collaborative missions, strategies and researchers shared between the AHA, Weil and now M-RISE, we believe we can make a difference in the lives of sudden cardiac arrest patients.”

The Weil Institute is also supporting the recruitment of qualified scholars and fellows from across the country for the training program. Interested applicants can contact Betty Hoss to apply. See the M-RISE website for additional program information.