Biology of Infectious Diseases & Inflammation

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal is a request for competitive renewal of a training grant to fund four predoctoral and two postdoctoral trainees in our Infectious Disease and Inflammation Program (IDIP). IDIP is comprised of a group of 19 funded investigators, all listed as trainees on this grant, our trainees, junior faculty (not listed a trainers) and administrative and technical staff who support research in infectious disease and inflammation. The areas of expertise of the faculty can be broadly grouped into four areas of interest: Pathogenesis of Reemerging Bacterial Infections (3), Biodefense and Emerging Viral Infections (5), Cancer as a Communicable Viral Disease (3) and Basic Inflammatory and Immunologic Mechanisms (8). The training faculty include 17 who have appointments in four University of New Mexico (UNM) School of Medicine (SOM) departments that include Internal Medicine (4), Molecular Genetics and Microbiology (6), Pathology (6), and Cell biology and Physiology (1)] or at Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute (2). The goals of the training program are to: 1) enrich interdisciplinary research in infectious diseases and inflammation by providing venues for research presentations, journal clubs, seminars and course development; 2) provide a rich, cooperative educational research environment with opportunities for both pre- and postdoctoral trainees to learn from a wide variety of scientists, their technicians and other trainees; and 3) to provide professional guidance, including instruction and experiential training in scientific ethics, teaching, and opportunities in diverse scientific careers. The plan is to recruit fellowship trainees from among those predoctoral students who have already matriculated in UNM SOM's interdisciplinary Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program (BSGP) who choose to work in the laboratories of IDIP faculty member. The postdoctoral candidates will be selected from qualified postdoctoral trainees recruited to DIP faculty laboratories. The selected trainees would be mentored (with two to three years of training grant support for predoctoral students and two years for postdoctoral trainees) by their specific IDIP trainer, and their progress will be regularly reviewed by the IDIP steering committee. All would be expected to take IDIP-specific courses, in addition to those courses that the predoctoraI trainees are required to take as specified by the BSGP. The program is strongly supported by both UNM SOM and the LRRI as evidenced by the SOM or LRRI jointly funding fully all first year students and by joint BSGP and departmental support for administration of the program, including all recruiting costs. Our program includes specific and unusual strengths in that trainees are exposed to didactic training and laboratory experiences that are very broad and that expose them to excellent interdisciplinary core facilities, strong biotechnotogy (corporate) collaborations, international programs (such as an ICIDR/Fogarty program), work with highly pathogenic potential bioweapons, superb structural biology and imaging capabilities, and well-developed bioengineering research partnerships.