BWF awards $7 million to infectious disease inv...( RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK N.C.The Burro...)

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C.The Burroughs Wellcome Fund has announced the recipients of the 2008 Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease awards.

The Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease award invests $500,000 during a five-year period to encourage aggressive, multidisciplinary approaches to investigating pathogenesis. BWF launched the program in 2002 and has made 72 awards for an investment of more than $30 million in the careers of investigators who are working on understanding the interaction between the human host and the infectious agentbacterial, viral, fungal, or parasitic.

All awardees hold tenure-track faculty positions and must be nominated by degree-granting institutions in the United States or Canada.

"The constant threat of infectious disease is of global concern," BWF President Dr. Enriqueta Bond said. "This award provides risk capital for investigators to use new and creative approaches to study the interaction between the host and the microbe."

Following are the 2008 award recipients, along with their institutions and research projects:

David Artis, Ph.D.
University of Pennsylvania
Tracking helminth-specific immune responses in vivo

Richard Bennett, Ph.D.
Brown University
Phenotypic variation and host adaptation by the human fungal pathogen Candida albicans

Miriam Braunstein, Ph.D.
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Identification of in vivo-secreted proteins of Mycobacterium tuberculosis with roles in host-pathogen interactions

James Carlyle, Ph.D.
University of Toronto
MHC-independent recognition of infected cells by natural killer cells of the innate immune system

Stephen Girardin, Ph.D.
University of Toronto
The Nod-like receptor Nod9 links mitochondrial dynamics and innate immunity to bacterial pathogens

Chuan He, Ph.D.
University of Chicago
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