Print“Since the earliest days of the Institute, pathogen genomics and infectious disease research has been one of our key focus areas given the grave health and economic toll infectious diseases take on societies globally, says J. Craig Venter, founder of JVCI.”
The National Institute of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has awarded $25 million to the J. Craig Venter Institute (JVCI) as part of an initiative to advance the understanding of infectious diseases such as malaria and influenza. The funding, which will be spread over five years, will be used to establish a genome center for infectious disease that will focus on the genomic analysis of pathogens responsible for infectious diseases with the findings and outcomes of the work to be made available as a resource for the broader scientific community.
The research, led by JVCI co-principal investigators, Karen Nelson and William Nierman, will involve more than 50 collaborators at approximately 40 research organizations around the world.
Infectious diseases are still one of the leading causes of death worldwide, especially in children in Africa and Southeast Asia. Globally, anti-microbial drug resistance continues to rise with some of the most common bacteria resistant to all but the strongest classes of antibiotics. The world population is also growing and travel is easier and faster to all corners of the world making pandemics a continual threat. Continued research into pathogen biology and infectious disease transmission is a key component to helping to alleviate these global health challenges.
“Since the earliest days of the Institute, pathogen genomics and infectious disease research has been one of our key focus areas given the grave health and economic toll infectious diseases take on societies globally,” says J. Craig Venter, founder and CEO of JVCI. “We are very pleased to be the recipients of this major grant from NIAID and look forward to enabling a more in-depth understanding of pathogen biology and potentially aiding in better treatments and preventative measures against infectious disease,” he says.
The not-for-profit research institute, with facilities in Maryland and California, has been past recipient of NIAID funding as one of its microbial and genomic sequencing centers. Under the present initiative, the JCVI-led team will utilize next generation DNA sequencing technologies, coupled with new bioinformatics and computing capabilities to better understand pathogen biology, virulence, drug resistance, immune evasion, and host microbiome biological interactions.
The program will be broken down into three research projects that will focus on viruses, bacteria, and parasites. Specific goals of the research include increasing the understanding of pathogen drug resistance and identify approaches to manage human infections by drug resistant organisms; gaining new insight into microbial diversity and evolution of pathogen populations and how these impact human infectious diseases; identifying mechanisms and consequences of pathogen modulation of host response to infection and how the pathogen interacts with host immune system and the host microbiome; characterizing the genomic variation in and virulence of infectious diseases; and exploring human immunity to malaria and influenza.
June 08, 2014
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-venter_institute_awarded_25m_nih_grant_.html
