Minnesota has more to lose from possible National Institutes of Health budget cuts than its population size would suggest, with the University of Minnesota and Mayo Clinic bringing in hundreds of millions in grant dollars to the state.

Ohio ranked 10th among U.S. states in attracting research funding from the National Institutes of Health last year at $778 million.

Release of smallpox as a bioterrorism weapon is a possibility that antiviral company Chimerix has been awarded $81 million to combat. The federal contract will be used to develop the Durham, North Carolina company’s antiviral drug candidate into a smallpox treatment.

Usually, it was Republicans v. Democrats in a race to increase funding to NIH grants and other National Institutes of Health research. But that is ending with GOP budget plans to cut $1 billion away from President Obama’s planned increase of the NIH budget. That’s bad news, considering nearly one out of every five important medical advances approved by the Food and Drug Administration between 1990 and 2007 was invented in a federally-funded lab.

A new strategic plan from an arm of the National Institutes of Health envisions scientists being able to identify genetic bases of most single-gene disorders and gaining new insights into multi-gene disorders in the next decade. This should lead to more accurate diagnoses, new drug targets and the development of practical treatments for many who today lack therapeutic options, according to the plan from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI).

Upper respiratory conditions in children will be the focus of research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that was awarded a $3.6 million National Institutes of Health grant. Researchers will develop computer models to help doctors determine the proper course of treatment.

GT Urological has raised $4.56 million from the sale of equity, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Case Western Reserve University has received a $12.5 million federal grant to implement programs aimed at reducing childhood obesity.

The artificial pancreas will be the focus of a public workshop put on by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. Such a device would be comprised of a “closed-loop system that would dispense insulin based on real-time changes in blood sugar levels,” according to the FDA, and would “provide a better quality of life and glucose control for those who require daily insulin administration.”

Cleveland Clinic researchers have won $11.7 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to find out why “good” cholesterol sometimes goes bad, and then to harness their discoveries as new diagnostic tests or therapies for heart disease.