Newswise — Feb. 13, 2020 — The ATS Foundation Research Program has announced that 17 researchers have been awarded one-year $40,000 Unrestricted Research Grants to advance pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine.

These grants span basic, clinical, and translational research in adult and pediatric medicine. Applicants consider how their research will provide novel approaches to challenging lung diseases, foster health care equality, and improve patient outcomes.

Since its inception in 2004, the ATS Foundation Research Program has awarded $19.3 million to 263 investigators, both in the U.S. and internationally. These researchers have gone on to receive $330 million in federal funding.

“The ATS grants are given to early investigators and can be an enormous stepping stone to a successful career,” says Dean Schraufnagel, MD, chair of the ATS Foundation and professor of medicine at the University of Illinois Chicago. “They indicate that the research and researcher are recognized by a review team of a leading scientific society in respiratory medicine. Getting an ATS grant greatly increases the ability to compete for major grants from the National Institutes of Health and other national and international agencies.”

“The quality and scientific rigor of the research grants awarded this year were outstanding. The committee was pleased to receive proposals that represented the broad spectrum of clinical and basic research interests of the ATS,” said Scientific Advisory Committee Chair Karen M. Ridge, PhD, of Northwestern University. “We are excited to see the imprint our awardees make in the fields of pulmonary, critical care, and sleep.”

The ATS Foundation Research Program Unrestricted Grant recipients for the 2019 grant cycle are:

Unrestricted Grant: PULMONARY

Deepthi Alapati, MBBS | Nemours/Alfred I duPont Hospital for Children Optimizing Airway Delivery of CRISPR-Cas9 Gene Editing Reagents Using Non-viral Vectors

Maurizio Chioccioli, PhD | Yale University A quantitative framework for diagnosing ciliary beating defects in Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia

Raghu Chivukula, MD, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital Mechanistic Analysis of Dysfunctional Lysosomes in Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome

Robert Guzy, MD, PhD | University of Chicago FGF Regulation of Myofibroblast Differentiation in Pulmonary Fibrosis

Jinho Kim, PhD | Stevens Institute of Technology Regeneration of Donor Lungs Refused for Transplantation Through Targeted Cell Replacement

Sydney Montesi, MD | Massachusetts General Hospital Collagen-targeted PET Imaging in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis

Crystal North, MD | Massachusetts General Hospital Environmental Influences on Respiratory Disease: Interactions between Air Pollution and HIV

Sarah O'Beirne, MD, PhD | Weill Cornell Medicine Small Airway Biology Underlying Enhanced Female Susceptibility to Smoking-Related Lung Disease

Franziska Rosser, MD, MPH | UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh Air Quality Index and Childhood Asthma: An Intervention

Daniel Schneider, MD, PhD | University of Michigan Influenza Modulates the Host Defense Function of Alveolar Macrophage-derived Extracellular Vesicles

Anna Volerman, MD | University of Chicago An RCT of Virtual Teach-to-Goal versus Brief Instruction for Children with Asthma in Clinics

Matt Zinter, MD | University of California, San Francisco Metatranscriptomic Evaluation of Lung Health in Pediatric Hematopoietic Cell Transplant Candidates

 

Unrestricted Grant: CRITICAL CARE

Mark Hepokoski, MD | University of California, San Diego Extracellular Mitochondrial DNA in ARDS Due to Sepsis

Edy Kim, MD, PhD | Brigham and Women's Hospital mTOR Drives Post-Sepsis Immunosuppression

Gary Weissman, MD | University of Pennsylvania Human and System Factors Contributing to Delays in Antibiotics for Patients Suspected of Sepsis

Unrestricted Grant: SLEEP

Alex Gileles-Hillel, MD | Hadassah Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel Counteracting Intermittent Hypoxia-Induced Adipose Tissue Dysfunction via VEGF-Mediated Angiogenisis

Christopher Schmickl, MD, PhD | University of California, San Diego Rescuing OSA Patients Unable to Tolerate CPAP Using Endotype-Targeted Drug Therapy (RESCUE-Drug)

 

About the ATS Foundation Since its inception in 2004, the ATS Foundation Research Program has awarded $19.3 million to 263 investigators, both in the U.S. and internationally. These researchers have gone on to receive $330 million in federal funding. That's a return on investment of $17 per dollar awarded.

 

About the American Thoracic Society

Founded in 1905, the American Thoracic Society is the world's leading medical association dedicated to advancing pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine. The Society’s more than 16,000 members prevent and fight respiratory disease around the globe through research, education, patient care and advocacy. The ATS publishes three journals, the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology and the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

The ATS will hold its 2020 International Conference, May 15-20, in Philadelphia, Pa., where world-renowned experts will share the latest scientific research and clinical advances in pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine.