Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection awards 2016-17 seed grants

Seed grants were awarded to seven faculty teams and individuals, as well as to eight young investigators, for the coming year.

- By Bruce Goldman

The Stanford Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection has awarded seed grants to 15 interdisciplinary research projects led by faculty members and young investigators.

The following faculty teams and individuals each received $50,000 to fund their projects:

Eric Appel, PhD, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, and Mark Davis, PhD, professor of microbiology and immunology, for “Development of single-injection vaccines by leveraging biomaterial technologies.”

Eugene Butcher, MD, professor of pathology, and Juliana Idoyaga, PhD, assistant professor of microbiology and immunology, for “Branching developmental pathways through high-dimensional single-cell analysis in trajectory space: Application to tissue-tropic dendritic cell development and the blood endothelial response to immunization.”

Shirat Einav, MD, assistant professor of infectious diseases and of microbiology and immunology, Stephen Quake, PhD, professor of bioengineering, and Purvesh Khatri, PhD, assistant professor of biomedical informatics research and of biomedical data science, for “Identification of patients at risk of developing severe dengue infection.”

Stephen Galli, PhD, professor of pathology, for “Detection and quantification of basophil activation during allergic reactions using a new avidin-based diagnostic tool.”

Desiree Labeaud, MD, MS, associate professor of pediatric infectious diseases, Holden Maecker, PhD, associate professor of microbiology and immunology, and Scott Boyd, MD, assistant professor of pathology, for “Characterizing the effects of antenatal parasitic infection on fetal immune system development.”

Matthew Lungren, MD, MPH, assistant professor of pediatric radiology, and Christopher Contag, PhD, professor of pediatrics and of microbiology and immunology, for “In-vivo imaging of phage therapy kinetics in eradication of biofilm-associated Pseudomonas aeruginosa lung infection.”

Emmanuel Mignot, MD, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, for “Genetics of T-cell response to trivalent flu vaccination and relevance to narcolepsy.”

Grants for young investigators

The following young investigators each received $25,000 to fund their projects:

Sijuan Ding, PhD, postdoctoral research fellow in gastroenterology, for “Genetic interrogation of host factors essential to rotavirus infection.”

Eliver Ghosn, PhD, instructor of genetics, for “Regenerative potential of human fetal versus adult HSC transplantation: B lymphocytes and macrophages heterogeneity.”

Hedwich Kuipers, PhD, basic life research scientist in infectious diseases, for “Heparin sulfate-IL-2 interactions in the control of autoimmunity.”

Marc Lucia Perez, PhD, postdoctoral scholar in surgery, for “Defining the CD8+ T-cell receptor and functional profile in T-cell-mediated allograft rejection.”

Vamsee Mallajosyula, PhD, postdoctoral scholar at the institute, for “Delineating how the CD4+ T-cell response to influenza vaccination in humans relates to the antibody response.”

Brook Ann Napier, PhD, postdoctoral scholar in microbiology and immunology, for “Determining the diagnostic and therapeutic power of complement-receptor C3aR in human sepsis.”

Nicole Paulk, PhD, instructor of pediatrics, for “Sexually dimorphic viral-host interactions in pediatric liver diseases.”

Heshan Peiris, PhD, postdoctoral scholar in developmental biology, for “Targeted immunosuppression and delivery of therapeutics to human pancreatic islets with chimeric antigen receptor T regulatory cells.”

Funding for the projects comes from the Marion Avery Family Seed Grant Endowment for the institute, the institute’s General Gift Fund, the School of Medicine Dean’s Office and the Stanford Child Health Research Institute.

About Stanford Medicine

Stanford Medicine is an integrated academic health system comprising the Stanford School of Medicine and adult and pediatric health care delivery systems. Together, they harness the full potential of biomedicine through collaborative research, education and clinical care for patients. For more information, please visit med.stanford.edu.

2023 ISSUE 3

Exploring ways AI is applied to health care