This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
NIH grants Einstein researchers $12 million to combat deadly viruses
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
The NIH has awarded scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine three grants totaling more than $12 million for research on Ebola virus, Marburg virus and hantavirus, according to a press release.
Kartik Chandran, PhD, professor of microbiology and immunology and the Harold and Muriel Block Faculty Scholar in Virology, and Jonathan Lai, PhD, associate professor of biochemistry, and colleagues will use a $6 million grant to develop broadly active monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) as a treatment for patients with Ebola. Although most mAb therapies currently under development are specific for one type of Ebola virus, the researchers hope to develop one or more broadly neutralizing antibodies that could potentially treat all three types of the virus, the release said.
Lai will use a second grant for $2.9 million over 4 years to expand on this research and develop broadly neutralizing antibody therapy for Marburg virus, a filovirus distantly related to Ebola, according to the release. In addition, he will also explore whether this approach to treatment development can be applied to other disease-causing viruses that are not filoviruses.
A third grant for $3.2 million over 5 years will be used for another project led by Chandran that will investigate how hantaviruses, which are transmitted by rodents, can enter the human body. According to the CDC, people can become infected with hantaviruses through contact with infected rodents’ urine and droppings. In the Americas, the viruses are associated with a highly fatal cardiopulmonary syndrome. In Europe and Asia, hantaviruses can cause a less fatal, but more prevalent, hemorrhagic fever with renal complications. Although hantavirus infections are not common, their frequency is expected to increase with human population growth and climate change, the release said. There are currently no approved vaccines or treatments for hantavirus infections.
Disclosure: Infectious Disease News was unable to confirm relevant financial disclosures at the time of publication.