Four Columbia faculty members have received prestigious grants from the National Institutes of Health, which recently announced 115 awards totaling $348 million to encourage high-risk research and innovation.

 

James Hone, associate professor of mechanical engineering at the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, and David A. Fidock, associate professor of medicine and microbiology and immunology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, are recipients of the NIH Director’s Transformative R01 Award (T-R01). The award is a new initiative established to support “exceptionally innovative, high risk, original and/or unconventional research projects that have the potential to create or overturn fundamental paradigms,” according to the NIH.

 

Fidock will use his T-R01 grant to explain the mechanisms by which malarial parasites, such as Plasmodium falciparum, acquire fatty acids throughout their life cycles. The research will focus on the early stage of infection that occurs in the liver and the subsequent stage that takes place in red blood cells and causes disease.

 

“Our studies have identified features of fatty acid metabolism that lend themselves towards an entirely novel set of attenuated parasite vaccines or drug therapies that can prevent or cure malaria,” said Fidock, whose lab specializes in antimalarial drug resistance and Plasmodium parasite biology. Fidock also studies how malarial parasites regulate their metabolism, development and pathogenic properties.

 

Hone is the co-investigator of a T-R01 grant led by researchers at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. The group won six million dollars over five years to look at how cells interact to form tissue in the kidneys. “The specific thing we’re looking at is part of the kidney that acts as a filter,” said Hone. “You have cells that come together like interlocking fingers. The question is: What is it that gets cells to do that?”

 

Hone’s lab will build microscopic scaffolds—three-dimensional structures that will allow scientists to artificially control the environment for cells to begin to form these tissues. “I’m very excited,” Hone said. “It’s the kind of grant that allows you to really focus on a project and work on it consistently with enough support to really do something.”

 

Alla Grishok, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at Columbia University Medical Center, and Naa Oyo A. Kwate, assistant professor of sociomedical sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health, are recipients of the NIH New Innovator Award for “exceptionally creative new investigators who propose highly innovative projects that have the potential for unusually high impact.”

 

Grishok’s research investigates the mechanisms and biological functions of RNA interference, which silences or suppresses gene activity within cells. Her research presents a model that assumes that RNA (ribonucleic acid) plays a much broader role in gene expression than currently recognized. Further research is still needed, she stresses, but the project could lead to more efficient cancer therapies based on RNA. “This is one of those high risk and potentially high reward projects,” said Grishok. “I’m very honored to receive this award.”

 

Kwate will use the grant to study how racism in different forms affects the lives and health of African Americans over time. She will also develop and test a novel ‘countermarketing’ program in African-American neighborhoods to intervene against the negative effects of racism. Taken together, her research attempts to answer two questions in biomedical and behavioral research: How does racism “get into” the body? And what do we do about it?