NIH Pandemic-Era Grants
· Pandemic Era Grants
/ 2020
JAMES C PAULSON · SCRIPPS RESEARCH INSTITUTE, THE · 2020 · $887,498 — PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT There is as yet no effective vaccine to HIV despite concerted efforts by numerous groups worldwide to produce one. The target for vaccines is the envelope spike protein (gp120/gp41), which mediates binding to receptors on the surface of CD4 T cells. The problem from a vaccin…
NIH Pandemic-Era Grants
· Pandemic Era Grants
/ 2020
AMIN S GHABRIAL · COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES · 2020 · $335,807 — Ghabrial – Project Summary To build a functional vascular system, a network of endothelial tubes must be generated through a combination of vasculogenesis and angiogenesis. During sprouting angiogenesis, endothelial tip cells lead the outgrowth of new branches. Tip cells anastomose with other tip ce…
NIH Pandemic-Era Grants
· Pandemic Era Grants
/ 2020
Adriaan Bax · NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF DIABETES AND DIGESTIVE AND KIDNEY DISEASES · 2020 · $995,227 — The envelope glycoprotein gp41 mediates the process of membrane fusion that enables entry of the HIV-1 virus into the host cell. Strong lipid affinity of the ectodomain suggests that its heptad repeat regions play an active role in destabilizing membranes by directly binding to the lipid bilayers an…
NIH Pandemic-Era Grants
· Pandemic Era Grants
/ 2020
William Copeland · NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH SCIENCES · 2020 · $472,295 — During this fiscal year we continued to devote major effort to work aimed at applications of molecular dynamics and quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics simulations required to help support the computational chemistry and molecular modeling needs of NIEHS scientists. Some projects involved creatio…
NIH Pandemic-Era Grants
· Pandemic Era Grants
/ 2020
Eugene V Koonin · NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE · 2020 · $413,126 — The rapid accumulation of genome sequences and protein structures during the last decade has been paralleled by major advances in sequence database search methods. The powerful Position-Specific Iterating BLAST (PSI-BLAST) method developed at the NCBI forms the basis of our work on protein motif ana…
NIH Pandemic-Era Grants
· Pandemic Era Grants
/ 2020
Aleksandra Nita-Lazar · NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES · 2020 · $5,612 — The focus of the proteomic approach is to identify and quantify viral structural proteins, specifically spike (S) glycoprotein as well as envelope (E) protein, membrane (M) protein, and nucleocapsid (N) protein in patient samples. The S protein mediates attachment of the virus to the host cell surfa…
NIH Pandemic-Era Grants
· Pandemic Era Grants
/ 2020
David Margulies · NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES · 2020 · $38,570 — Our goal in this project is to explore published structures of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein with a focus on its receptor binding domain (RBD), in efforts to generate recombinant molecules of increased thermal stability. To this end we have examined published structures and bioinformatically have mad…
NIH Pandemic-Era Grants
· Pandemic Era Grants
/ 2020
KIM HASENKRUG · NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES · 2020 · $72,116 — A primary goal of this project is to understand the basic immunological responses involved in the recovery from COVID-19 using animal models including mice, hamsters and non-human primates. To date we have completed the first phase of testing SARS-CoV-2-infected rhesus macaques that were depleted of…
NIH Pandemic-Era Grants
· Pandemic Era Grants
/ 2020
Joshua Hoong Yu Tan · NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES · 2020 · $3,181,843 — The overarching goal of this project is to study the immune response to COVID-19 at the monoclonal level to increase our understanding of basic biology and develop new tools to combat disease. This project has started recently, so most of our findings are still preliminary. We have screened plasma f…
NIH Pandemic-Era Grants
· Pandemic Era Grants
/ 2020
Nadya Tarasova · DIVISION OF BASIC SCIENCES - NCI · 2020 · $303,572 — The reliability, and consequently success of virtual screening depends heavily on the accuracy of the x-ray structure depiction of the target protein structure in solution. Crystal packing can distort conformation of flexible parts of the protein thus leading to misrepresentation of the protein stru…
NIH Pandemic-Era Grants
· Pandemic Era Grants
/ 2020
Alex Compton · DIVISION OF BASIC SCIENCES - NCI · 2020 · $265,660 — We have successfully produced HIV-based pseudovirus bearing the spike protein of SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 and produced cell lines that are permissive to these pseudoviruses. We have developed a protocol for transiently transfecting human ACE2 (the receptor for SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2) and TMPRSS2…
NIH Pandemic-Era Grants
· Pandemic Era Grants
/ 2020
Heinrich Feldmann · NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES · 2020 · $856,485 — Over the past fiscal year, we have performed studies on four viral pathogens causing respiratory disease in humans, Nipah virus, influenza virus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). From February to July 2020, only…
NIH Pandemic-Era Grants
· Pandemic Era Grants
/ 2020
Ted Hackstadt · NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES · 2020 · $18,479 — We are using cell culture models to study SARS-CoV-2 replication. African Green Monkey Kidney (Vero) cells are being used as a model system to study interactions with the host cell. A time course of viral replication was first evaluated by immunofluorescence and electron microscopy. Using commerci…
NIH Pandemic-Era Grants
· Pandemic Era Grants
/ 2020
David Sacks · NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES · 2020 · $22,137 — In order to overexpress SARS CoV-2 spike protein (S) in Leishmania, the full length S gene sequence was amplified by PCR from plasmid pCAGGS containing the Wuhan-Hu-1 spike and inserted into plasmid pSSU-NEO using a Gibson Assembly reaction, with the addition of an N-terminal myc tag and a C-termi…
NIH Pandemic-Era Grants
· Pandemic Era Grants
/ 2020
Barney Graham · NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES · 2020 · $1,394,275 — When the MERS CoV outbreak raised global health concerns, we initiated a program to develop a candidate vaccine. Starting from Spike glycoprotein (S) sequences, we developed an immunization strategy consisting of a full-length S DNA prime and a S1 subunit protein boost that elicited high titers of n…
NIH Pandemic-Era Grants
· Pandemic Era Grants
/ 2020
Avindra Nath · NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF NEUROLOGICAL DISORDERS AND STROKE · 2020 · $1,054,273 — Specific aim 1: Develop in vitro 3D brain organoid models derived from human adult peripheral CD34+ cells to study neural development and degeneration and infectious diseases involving human brain. We continued to characterize the 3D brain organoids with multiple cell types including neurons, glial …
NIH Pandemic-Era Grants
· Pandemic Era Grants
/ 2020
Aravinda M. DeSilva · UNIV OF NORTH CAROLINA CHAPEL HILL · 2020 · $528,796 — Abstract High-quality recombinant antigens and reliable and accurate SARS-CoV-2 serological assays are urgently needed for surveillance and for defining the immune mechanisms of viral pathogenesis, viral clearance, and protection against reinfection. Core B of the UNC SARS-CoV-2 Serological Sciences…
NIH Pandemic-Era Grants
· Pandemic Era Grants
/ 2020
KOEN K VAN ROMPAY · DUKE UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $886,934 — The proposed studies here will complement our studies in the P01 AI117915-06 “Early Life Vaccination to Prevent HIV Acquisition in Adolescence”. In the parent grant, we will define the molecular and immune pathways resulting in the induction of protective HIV Env-specific antibodies, both broadly ne…
NIH Pandemic-Era Grants
· Pandemic Era Grants
/ 2020
John V Fahy · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO · 2020 · $768,543 — ABSTRACT COVID19 is causing an unprecedented global health emergency worldwide and new treatments are urgently needed. In this grant application we propose to determine the therapeutic utility of MUC-031 - a dithiol modified saccharide - as a treatment for COVID19. We are currently developing MUC-03…
NIH Pandemic-Era Grants
· Pandemic Era Grants
/ 2020
ANIL K SOOD · UNIVERSITY OF TX MD ANDERSON CAN CTR · 2020 · $162,000 — PROJECT SUMMARY The 2019 novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 causes COVID-19, a pandemic viral disease. This disease has resulted in world-wide fatalities, particularly in patients with cardiovascular disease, and arterial hypertension. As of June 2020, close to 6.6 million cases and death of 393,000 were…