Immune Cells Present Long Before Infection Predict Flu Symptoms

Link Type
Funded-research
Media Type
Article
Publish or Event Date
Link URL
https://www.stjude.org/media-resources/news-releases/2023-medicine-science-news/immune-cells-present-long-before-infection-predict-flu-symptoms.html
Research Institution
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
Short Title
Immune Cells Present Long Before Infection Predict Flu Symptoms
Content Coordinator
Claudia Wair

Berkeley Public Health Launches Major Study on Effects of Climate Change and Social Inequality on Deadly Fungal Infections

Link Type
Funded-research
Media Type
Article
Publish or Event Date
Link URL
https://publichealth.berkeley.edu/news-media/research-highlights/bph-launches-major-study-on-deadly-fungal-infections/
Research Institution
UC Berkeley School of Public Health
Short Title
Berkeley Public Health Launches Major Study on Effects of Climate Change and Social Inequality on Deadly Fungal Infections
Content Coordinator
Claudia Wair

Abby Overacre-Delgoffe Earned an Award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Link Type
Funded-research
Media Type
Article
Publish or Event Date
Link URL
https://www.pitt.edu/pittwire/accolades-honors/overacre-niaid-new-innovator-2023
Research Institution
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Short Title
Abby Overacre-Delgoffe Earned an Award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Content Coordinator
Claudia Wair

Your Genome Report Is Negative—What You Need To Know Now

cartoon of a hospital administrator talking to two people about their test results
Credit: NHGRI/NIH

We’ve completed the analysis of your genome sequence.

You may remember joining NIH study 17-I-0122. This study offered genetic testing called genome sequencing. We looked at nearly all of your DNA in detail. Genes are made from DNA and are the instructions for our bodies.

A cartoon of two scientists discussing DNA in a large test tube.
Credit: NHGRI/NIH

We did not find a genetic cause for your symptoms.

We looked for differences or variants in your genes that could connect to your symptoms. We did not find anything to share with you.

cartoon of an empty jar with a pile of orange shapes on the left under a header "Environmental factors" and a pile of yellow circles on the right under a header "Genetic factors"
Credit: Jehannine Austin and NIAID

We discussed that mental illnesses are caused by a combination of multiple genetic and environmental factors. ​

​We did not expect to find a single genetic factor that explained your mental health history.​

​Your negative report does not mean that there are no genetic factors contributing to your mental health history.​

A cartoon of two scientists drawing DNA on a board.
Credit: NHGRI/NIH

We also did not find any reportable secondary findings.

Secondary findings are variants in genes that may put a person at risk for rare, serious disorders that can be prevented or treated. Often, secondary findings are not related to your symptoms. Most of them have to do with risk for certain types of heart disease or cancer.

Learn more about secondary finding genes.

A cartoon of two doctors in lab coats standing in front of a big laptop screen with data on it.
Credit: NHGRI/NIH

No test is perfect. You may still have gene variants that are important for your health.

This test may have missed variants that are important for your health, including things that cause your symptoms. You should continue to work with your doctors to determine the best ways to care for your health, including having routine screenings. If a provider recommends further genetic testing, you should not assume it will be negative.

Some variants may not have been detected due to limitations in sequencing and analysis. The interpretation of your data is based on what we know now. New discoveries may change our analysis. We may provide updates to this report.

A cartoon of a hospital administrator talking to a woman in a wheelchair.
Credit: NHGRI/NIH

Next steps.

Please find your personal report in the patient portal. This report is a complex document that may be most helpful to your doctors.

Visit your patient portal

If you’d like to talk about your result, please email our team at NIMHGeneticsSurvey@mail.nih.gov.

Vector Biology Information for Researchers

image of Aedes Aegypti Mosquito Larvae

Aedes Aegypti Mosquito larvae

Credit: NIAID

NIAID conducts and supports research to better understand vector biology and behavior and to develop products that can help prevent the spread of vector-borne infectious diseases. NIAID supports research on a wide range of vectors, including mollusks (certain fresh-water snails) and blood-feeding arthropods, such as mosquitoes, ticks, mites, triatomine bugs, and certain flies (including sand flies and tsetse flies).

Vector Biology Program

The NIAID vector biology program supports basic, translational, and clinical research, with the goal of developing products to prevent disease transmission. Basic research activities provide a better understanding of the relationship between the vector and the pathogen and the vector and the vertebrate host, as well as the interaction of the vector with its environment. For example, NIAID is funding an integrative research project to better understand how ticks recognize and suppress infectious disease pathogens and help identify targets for future prevention and treatment options for tickborne diseases. Read more information on the tick immunity project.

NIAID is also funding translational research to support projects to develop novel products and approaches that reduce transmission of vector-borne pathogens to humans. Clinical research helps assess the public health impact of vector control interventions.

Research Efforts

NIAID supports and conducts a wide range of vector-related research.

Vector-Host Interactions Research Effort supports activities to better understand the process of transmission of pathogens via arthropod vectors. As part of this effort, NIAID brings together a multidisciplinary group of investigators from the fields of vector biology, parasite immunology, and human immunology to dissect the complex process of pathogen transmission at the intersection of the human host, the arthropod vector, and the pathogen.

Monitoring Windborne Migration of Disease Vectors, Pathogens, and Pests in Africa to Improve Public Health and Food Securityis committed to establishing a pan-African network of aerial sampling stations to monitor windborne movement of insect disease vectors, disease agents, agriculture pests and their enemies, and keystone species affecting ecosystem stability. 

Malaria Research Program seeks fundamental knowledge about the interactions of malaria parasites with the human host and the mosquito vectors that transmit them and to apply this knowledge to prevent disease, enhance health, and improve the quality of life in malaria endemic areas. 

Funding

NIAID is always accepting researcher-initiated applications to Parent Funding Opportunities that can be submitted three times per year (see NIH due dates).

NIAID also provides focused funding opportunities specific to vector biology:

Connect with NIAID program officers about potential research projects and funding for vector biology research.

See a full list of funding opportunities

Resources for Researchers

NIAID offers resources for researchers to advance basic, preclinical, and clinical research. These include reagents and organisms offered through repositories, such as the BEI resources repository, and genomics, population biology, and bioinformatics databases. NIAID also provides other services designed to facilitate product development and clinical evaluation.

For researchers developing products such as diagnostics, vaccines, or drug therapies, check out Support for Infectious Disease Product Developers.

See all vector biology resources for researchers

Connect with other researchers

Search for scientists at NIAID who research vector biology in the scientist directory.

Meetings

NIAID regularly hosts meetings on a range of topics, including those related to vector-host interactions. Read past meeting summaries.

For more information on previous and upcoming workshops related to vector biology, please email Dr. Adriana Costero-Saint Denis.

Follow Us on Social Media

@NIAIDNews on X
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NIAID New Innovators Awards

The NIAID New Innovators program began in 2019 and provides support for Early Stage Investigators (ESIs) proposing creative, novel, and high-impact research concepts that may be risky or at a stage too early to fare well in traditional peer review. The program is designed to facilitate the movement of talented postdoctoral fellows into independent positions and to support talented newly independent investigators.

The next submission deadline is October 10, 2025.

headshot of Hugh Auchincloss
Hugh Auchincloss, M.D.
Credit
NIAID

Letter to Awardees from Dr. Auchincloss, NIAID Principal Deputy Director

"Congratulations to the awardees of the NIAID DP2 New Innovator Award Program. I cannot wait to see the exciting science that develops as a result of their bold new ideas under exploration."

NIAID DP2 Application Information

NIH published the notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) in a June 2, 2023, Guide announcement.

On June 5th, we updated the Application Questions & Answers page. 

Read the article in the November 8, 2023 edition of Funding News, Meet the Awarded Investigators of NIAID’s New Innovators Awards Program

Contact Information

  • Contact the program staff for more information about scientific and programmatic related questions.
  • Contact scientific review staff for questions about the application process. 

Other Funding Opportunity

NIH Director's New Innovator Award

Bioinformatics Software at BCBB

Current biological research generates vast amounts of data, but our ability to use this information depends on the availability of powerful computing tools. BCBB develops custom bioinformatics software applications or analytical pipelines that can meet this need. We also share these tools publicly to further advance biomedical discovery.  

Services

a person sitting at a desk working at a computer
Credit
Adobe Stock

Software Development

We provide scientific software development in bioinformatics and computational biology. We can provide novel algorithms for data analysis and data integration, high throughput processing, automation of research workflows and more.

cartoon computers surrounding a cloud with lines connecting them
Credit
Adobe Stock

Database Development

We can help develop scientific databases necessary for research analysis. Our working knowledge of biological databases—such as the databases offered through the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), Universal Protein Resource (UniProt), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), and Gene Ontology (GO) —can help you extend the scope of your dataset.

two people working together at a computer, a person with virtual reality goggles on in the background
Credit
Adobe Stock

Custom Scripting

We use custom scripting to design tools for easily extracting and processing data, building analysis pipelines, or automating workflows. We can also take your existing script and transform it into a publicly available, mature web application that can be updated with little effort. These tools can help you extract and process data from an existing Excel worksheet, query and retrieve data , and reformat existing data.

Products

Through the services we offer the research community, we now have a range of software applications that advance biomedical discovery for NIAID researchers and collaborators.

METAGENOTE

METAGENOTE offers a quick and intuitive way to annotate data from genomics studies. Many researchers find it cumbersome to create and use the standard templates for annotation, fill in the required minimum metadata annotation, and submit metadata along with associated raw sequencing files to the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) using the recommended transfer protocols. We developed METAGENOTE to give researchers a better way to annotate samples and submit to SRA by streamlining sample metadata annotation and using existing ontologies and standards.

*METAGENOTE will be retired on May 1, 2025. After this date, you will no longer have access to the application or your data through the interface. Following its retirement, the METAGENOTE code, documentation, and more information will be available at https://github.com/niaid/metagenote.

Nephele

Nephele is a microbiome analysis engine which brings together microbiome data and analysis tools in a cloud computing environment. Researchers across life and clinical science disciplines are exploring the impact of microbes and microbial community dynamics. However, they often lack the resources or skills to analyze data in the context of multi-dimensional databases associated with metagenomic analysis. We developed Nephele with a friendly web front to powerful pipelines that streamlines data uploads, analysis, and visualization of these datasets.

NIH 3D

NIH 3D is an open, community-driven portal for bioscientific and medical 3D models. While a number of online resources for 3D prints exist, we saw a lack of scientific models and expertise required to generate and validate those models. We designed NIH 3D to fill that gap by providing novel, web-based tools to empower users to create bioscientific and medical 3D models.

Papillomavirus Episteme (PaVE)

Papillomavirus Episteme (PaVE) is a web application to search, analyze, and explore highly organized and curated papillomavirus genomes. We developed this relational database to provide researchers an integrated resource for analyzing papillomavirus genome sequences.

Pathogens in Augmented Reality (PathogenAR)

Our research and others' work has shown the potential to dramatically change biomedical research, education, and clinical practice through augmented reality (AR). That’s why we developed Pathogens in Augmented Reality (PathogenAR), an augmented reality app that allows users to explore interactive stories about pathogens and pathogenic disease. PathogenAR uses image-tracking-based interactivity to share structural and functional features of biomolecules and viruses.

Simple Insight Toolkit (SimpleITK)

The Simple Insight Toolkit (SimpleITK) platform allows researchers to load, process, and analyze images using the programming language they are most familiar with, including C++, Python, R, and more. This provides researchers more accurate and precise image analysis without spending time and resources diving into complex workflow development.

Tuberculosis Portals (TB Portals)

Tuberculosis Portals (TB Portals) is an open, web-based platform to view and analyze clinical, bacterial genomic, and medical imaging data from TB patient cases. While TB—particularly drug-resistant TB—is a rising global health threat, data sources were siloed and lacked patient case information. We developed TB Portals to harmonize data from international collaborators and openly share them.

Technologies

  • Python
  • Javascript/Typescript
  • Postgres

Publications

Clinical exome sequencing of 1000 families with complex immune phenotypes: Toward comprehensive genomic evaluations. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2022 Oct;150(4):947-954. doi: 10.1016/j.jaci.2022.06.009. Epub 2022 Jun 24.

Anatomical structures, cell types and biomarkers of the Human Reference Atlas. Nat Cell Biol. 2021 Nov;23(11):1117-1128. doi: 10.1038/s41556-021-00788-6. Epub 2021 Nov 8. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.09.24.21263853

Nephele: a cloud platform for simplified, standardized and reproducible microbiome data analysis. Bioinformatics. 2018 Apr 15;34(8):1411-1413. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btx617.

The Papillomavirus Episteme: a major update to the papillomavirus sequence database. Nucleic Acids Res. 2017 Jan 4;45(D1):D499-D506. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkw879. Epub 2016 Oct 5.

Our Team

Read about our development team, their individual backgrounds, and projects they work on.

Women's Health Information for Researchers

Study volunteer receives inoculation

April 3, 2017: Study volunteer receives inoculation at Redemption Hospital in Monrovia on the opening day in Liberia of PREVAC, a Phase 2 Ebola vaccine trial in West Africa.

Credit: NIAID

NIAID conducts and supports basic and applied research to understand, diagnose, prevent, treat, and ultimately cure infectious and immune-mediated diseases, including diseases that affect the health of women and girls. NIAID involves women in clinical studies on treatment and prevention of HIV infection and AIDS, autoimmune diseases, and other infectious diseases. NIAID conducts research and collaborates with other organizations on research initiatives within NIAID's mission areas that aim to improve women's health. 

NIH created the women’s health research category in 1994 for annual budgeting purposes and in 2019 it was updated to include the following categories:

  • Studies with only female participants
  • Diseases or health conditions unique to women
  • Disease or conditions that predominantly affect women or girls
  • Research with an overall goal of examining women’s health outcomes, trajectories, risk factors, diagnosis or treatment strategies, or health differences between women and men
  • Career development, training, and meeting grants related to fostering the women’s health research workforce

Research Funding

Researchers are always welcome to submit investigator-initiated R01 grant applications on topics relevant to women’s health that fall within the NIAID mission. Additionally, researchers can respond to specific requests for applications issued or supported by NIAID, which are available on the NIAID Funding Opportunities List.

Read about funding opportunities for research that affects the health of women

Training and Career Development Funding

NIAID supports multiple funding opportunities for individual projects and institutional training and career development programs. NIAID also participates in other training-focused funding opportunities that are sponsored by other NIH institutes and centers,

Read about women's health training and career development programs

Resources for Researchers

Many of the resources for researchers offered by NIAID apply to women’s health research. View the full list of resources for researchers.

Additional resources on preparing grant applications can be found through the NIAID Grants & Contracts pages.

Information about Inclusion of Special Populations, including Women, Minorities, and inclusion across the life span, can be found on the NIAID Grants & Contacts Human Subjects pages. The NIH has additional resources regarding policies on Inclusion of Women and Minorities as Participants in Research involving Human Subjects.

See a full list of all resources for researchers

Networks

NIAID participates in and supports research networks that help to move science forward.

See a list of networks that fund women’s health research

Molnupiravir Administered at Human Effect Size-Equivalent Dose Blocks SARS-CoV-2 Transmission in Ferrets, Researchers Find

Link Type
Funded-research
Media Type
Article
Publish or Event Date
Link URL
https://news.gsu.edu/2023/08/09/molnupiravir-administered-at-human-effect-size-equivalent-dose-blocks-sars-cov-2-transmission-in-ferrets-researchers-find/
Research Institution
Georgia State University
Short Title
Molnupiravir Administered at Human Effect Size-Equivalent Dose Blocks SARS-CoV-2 Transmission in Ferrets
Content Coordinator
Claudia Wair

Academic-Private Partnership Aims to Reduce Toxic Effects of Deadly Digestive Bacteria

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