Oct. 12, 2009
The University of Wisconsin-Stout in Menomonie will receive part of $5 billion in grant awards, which President Barack Obama designated for medical research week under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
Associate professor of biology Jim Burritt is part of a team researching life threatening fungal infections of the lung. His research will be funded in part by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, which is part of the stimulus funding.
“Life-threatening fungal infections of the lung are an increasingly common problem in hospitalized patients with complex health problems,” Burritt said. “In recent decades, a filamentous fungus called Aspergillus fumigatus has become the leading airborne fungus causing death in patients with blood cancer and those individuals undergoing tissue or bone marrow transplants in an attempt to restore good health.”
Though progress is being made, the defense mechanisms that protect humans from infections caused by A. fumigatus are not clearly understood. New medical strategies are needed to strengthen the resistance in humans who are susceptible to this disease, Burritt said.
“The ability to reduce lung infections relies on a better understanding of the natural defense that protects healthy humans,” he added.
The team’s long-term research goal is to determine the molecular basis of resistance to A. fumigatus.
“The objective of our current study is to characterize the natural defense mechanisms of immune cells that kill fungi in the lung, so that these same strategies might be used to reduce these devastating infections in patients at risk,” Burritt said.
For more information, contact Burritt at burrittj@uwstout.edu or 715-232-5025.
