.
The institute, with offices in Maryland and California, will use the
five-year grant from NIH to establish the Genome Center for Infectious
Diseases to study the genetic secrets of a wide range of bacteria,
viruses and parasites, officials said on Thursday.
The effort will include genetic sequencing of a number of pathogens
and research on genetic mechanisms behind the emergence of antibiotic
resistance, they said.
“It's a pretty big program,” said Karen Nelson, president of the non-profit institute, in a telephone interview.
Infectious diseases are among the leading causes of death worldwide.
Venter, the former NIH researcher who founded the institute, said in a
statement that the new work will be aimed at “enabling a more in-depth
understanding of pathogen biology and potentially aiding in better
treatments and preventative measures against infectious disease.”
The parasite research will focus on malaria, the mosquito-borne
disease that every year kills more than 620,000 people - mostly African
children, and also toxoplasmosis, which U.S. health officials call a
leading cause of death attributed to foodborne illness in the United
States, officials said.
“Malaria is a
particularly high focus for the [NIH's] National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases. The focus there is really on exploring
approaches to come up with malaria vaccines, which are looking more and
more like they're going to potentially be a reality for managing
malaria,” Venter Institute researcher William Nierman added.
Viruses to be studied include: influenza from human, avian and swine
sources, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), rotavirus, West Nile virus
and Eastern equine encephalitis virus.
In
the bacterial research, the program aims to perform genetic sequencing
on more than 1,700 strains of three disease-causing types: klebsiella,
acinetobacter and enterobacter.
0 comments:
Post a Comment