{"id":79245,"date":"2013-06-11T08:21:39","date_gmt":"2013-06-11T12:21:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=79245"},"modified":"2013-08-27T11:31:53","modified_gmt":"2013-08-27T15:31:53","slug":"nih-awards-13m-plus-for-uconn-immunology-researchers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2013\/06\/nih-awards-13m-plus-for-uconn-immunology-researchers\/","title":{"rendered":"NIH Awards $13M-plus for UConn Immunology Research"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Leo<\/a>
Leo Lefran\u00e7ois is principal investigator of an ongoing study of how the immune system responds to viral and bacterial pathogens.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The UConn Health Center has been awarded a grant of more than $13 million from the National Institutes of Health to study pathogens, their products, and our immune responses to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe seek to understand the way in which the immune system responds to a number of infections that not only are clinically relevant but also are relevant to biodefense,\u201d says principal investigator Leo Lefran\u00e7ois<\/a>, chair of the Health Center\u2019s Department of Immunology.<\/p>\n

The target viral and bacterial pathogens are the influenza virus, listeria, salmonella, and staphylococcal toxins. The grant, from the NIH\u2019s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, covers years 8-12 of the project \u201cModulation of Biodefense Responses to Microbial Pathogens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cImmunity to infections and to microbial toxins falls into two major categories: those responses that protect against infection (e.g., vaccination) and those that result in increased sickness (i.e., immunopathology),\u201d Lefran\u00e7ois says. \u201cThe team will delve into the mechanisms by which both of these processes occur.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Purple<\/a>
Purple dots represent bacteria in listeria infection, one of the pathogens UConn Health Center immunology researchers are continuing to study with the backing of a $13 million federal grant.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The other principal investigators are Anthony Vella<\/a> and Linda Cauley<\/a>, also from the Health Center\u2019s Department of Immunology, and Stephen McSorley of the University of California-Davis, a former Health Center faculty member. The projects are supported by UConn Health Center core facilities including the Flow Cytometry Core<\/a>, headed by H. Leonardo Aguila<\/a>, and the Fluorescence Microscopy Core<\/a>, headed by Kamal Khanna<\/a> and Ann Cowan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cOverall, the outcomes of this work will help improve vaccination and provide insight into how to control deleterious responses to infections and toxins,\u201d Lefran\u00e7ois says.<\/p>\n

The study abstract is available on the NIH website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n
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Follow\u00a0the UConn Health Center<\/a> on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0Twitter<\/a> and\u00a0YouTube<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A federal grant funds five more years of UConn Health Center scientists\u2019 study of immune response to infection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":79246,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2076,179,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[57,2010],"class_list":["post-79245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","category-uconn-health","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 08:59:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79245"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79254,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79245\/revisions\/79254"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/79246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79245"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=79245"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=79245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}