Respiratory Infectious Disease Projects Launch with $158,000+ in Grants

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

The Oklahoma Center for Respiratory and Infectious Diseases recently awarded grants to four pilot projects in the field of respiratory infectious disease research. The funding comes from a Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (CoBRE) grant that Oklahoma State University’s Center for Veterinary Health Sciences recently received from the National Institutes of Health.

Designed to generate preliminary data for future external grant applications and to nurture future project leaders for CoBRE, the four 8-month pilot projects received up to $50,000 each for a total of $158,459.

The Oklahoma Center for Respiratory and Infectious Diseases is a statewide multi-institutional center focused on research excellence, faculty mentoring, and interdisciplinary collaborations in the respiratory infectious disease field. The four projects involve many researchers located across the state. The four pilot projects are:

Photoreceptors as a novel class of virulence factors in opportunistic pathogens—principal investigators Wouter Hoff and Marianna Patrauchan, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Oklahoma State University
Azoreductase characterization of Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain FRD1, a cystic fibrosis isolate—principal investigator Gilbert John, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Oklahoma State University
The role of glutamate in the initiation and maintenance of pleurisy—principal investigator Kenneth Miller, Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, OSU Center for Health Sciences, Tulsa, Okla.
Validation of bacterial condensins as drug targets—principal investigator Valentin Rybenkov, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Okla.

“Respiratory infectious disease is the top ‘one global’ burden of disease,” says Lin Liu, Ph.D., director of the CoBRE. “It is a public health priority and the discoveries that can be made with this funding will address that need.”