The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has awarded an $11.5 million grant to develop a program to identify immune system and microbial pathogen patterns that result in persistent bloodstream infections, including those caused by antimicrobial-resistant pathogens.
The Lundquist Institute (TLI) at Harbor-UCLA Medical Centers announced the grant yesterday, which was awarded to TLI principal investigator Michael Yeamen, PhD, who is a professor of medicine at UCLA and chief of the division of molecular medicine at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. The grant is a collaborative multicomponent award that allows a team of investigators to work with on a specific research objective.
Defining the immune system and pathogen patterns will allow new ways to predict which patients are at risk for persistent infections and guide the best treatment. The grant focuses on infections caused by Staphylococcus, including methicillin-resistance S aureus (MRSA), and Candida, an invasive fungus that is often drug-resistant.
The challenge of infections that are resistant to conventional antibiotics is growing every day.
The grant is intended to fund work beyond traditional genetic sequencing to determine correlates of immunity and infection. Instead, the focus is epigenomics, which explores patterns in how DNA is modified beyond sequence in ways that affect immune response and antibiotic efficacy.
TLI said detecting hidden epigenomic patterns within vast datasets will help with efforts to speed the discovery and development of new anti-infective agents, immunotherapies, and vaccines.
In the statement, Yeamen said, "The challenge of infections that are resistant to conventional antibiotics is growing every day—and will pose an increasing threat to public health unless we find new, improved ways to predict, prevent, and cure these infections."