VCU News Center – VCU Research Team Awarded NIH Grant to Study Asthma, Allergic Disease

News releases and media advisories

For immediate release:
5/20/2008

Sathya Achia Abraham
VCU Communications and Public Relations
(804) 827-0890
sbachia@vcu.edu

VCU Research Team Awarded NIH Grant to Study Asthma, Allergic Disease

A team of Virginia Commonwealth University researchers has received a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases grant totaling nearly $7.3 million for a Cooperative Research Center to study various aspects of asthma and allergic disease.

Allergic disease is the sixth leading cause of chronic disease in the United States, and while various treatments have been developed to control allergy, no cure has been found.

The five-year, Cooperative Research Center project brings together four departments at VCU to study different aspects of asthma and allergic diseases.

"The collaborative nature of this center aims to create synergy between the various investigators and departments involved, and thereby facilitate a greater understanding of asthma and allergic diseases than could be achieved by each investigator working independently," said principal investigator Lawrence B. Schwartz, M.D., Ph.D., the Charles and Evelyn Thomas professor of medicine and chair of the Division of Rheumatology, Allergy & Immunology in the VCU Department of Internal Medicine.

There are four components to the study. In one project the team hopes to better understand how people with allergies can be desensitized; and a second project aims to dissect the molecular pathways involved in allergic inflammation. A third project will examine how the production of the allergy-causing antibody, IgE, is regulated, which may possibly lead to treatments that reduce its production. A fourth project examines a newly described lipid mediator of allergic inflammation. Agents that block this mediator have potential benefit to people with allergic conditions.

"Four centers were funded from more than 20 applicants, making this a highly competitive process. This is an example of how the cooperative environment at VCU can make us competitive with the best research universities in the United States," Schwartz said.

Schwartz will be collaborating with VCU researchers, John Ryan, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Biology; Dan Conrad, Ph.D., from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology; and Sarah Spiegel, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

About VCU and the VCU Medical Center:

Virginia Commonwealth University is a major, urban public research university with national and international rankings in sponsored research. Located on two downtown campuses in Richmond, VCU enrolls more than 32,000 students in 205 certificate and degree programs in the arts, sciences and humanities. Sixty-five of the programs are unique in Virginia, many of them crossing the disciplines of VCU’s 15 schools and one college. MCV Hospitals and the health sciences schools of Virginia Commonwealth University compose the VCU Medical Center, one of the nation’s leading academic medical centers. For more, see www.vcu.edu.