Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI) recently received two major grant awards to explore how to regulate the immune system, as part of a nationwide collaborative program to prevent autoimmune diseases. The awards will provide BRI scientists with $4.7 million from the National Institutes of Health to discover molecular mechanisms and new therapy targets through in-depth studies of immune function in cells from research participants in the BRI autoimmunity biorepositories.
"We're committed to working with NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) and the U01 Cooperative Study Group to identify and address key gaps in current research in autoimmunity prevention," said BRI Director Gerald Nepom, MD, PhD. "We're pleased that reviewers and funders of this program have confidence in BRI's ability to play a pivotal role in this initiative, and are looking forward to this important research collaboration."
BRI Associate Director Jane Buckner, MD, will lead a $2.6 million grant to understand how the immune system becomes unbalanced in individuals with autoimmune diseases in order to determine how the immune response might be manipulated to prevent autoimmunity in people.