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The New England Regional Center of Excellence will use the Developmental Grants Fund to promote innovative, cutting edge research in areas that may yield discoveries that would translate into the creation of new vaccines, therapeutics and/or diagnostics to combat Category A-C select agents. The Developmental Grants Fund will be invested in research projects with the greatest potential to grow to full NERCE research programs or to projects that would be competitive for traditional NIH funding. Given the relatively short duration of support (two years or less) and the relatively small investment ($100,000/year or less), the Developmental Grants will be more risky and require less preliminary data than conventional "RO1-like" grants.
Developmental Grants funds will also be used to help established New England Category A-C investigators take advantage of the NERCE Core Facilities. Since existing grants do not have budgets to accommodate use of these cores, these investigators will be encouraged to apply for Developmental Grants funding to expand their research plans. The fund will be used to attract investigators who are not working in the area of biodefense to begin research programs on category A-C agents and to attract investigators from institutions and companies that are not participating in the NERCE. Finally, the Developmental Grants Fund will be used to encourage collaborations among investigators, particularly between basic and clinical research laboratories and between traditional microbiology laboratories and investigators in other basic science disciplines (e.g. immunologists, cell biologists, chemical biologists, bioinformaticists).
In order to create the most fertile environment for discovery, developmental funds will be used to make strategic investments in projects of high risk but potentially high return preferentially over conventional small grants that are more likely to attract traditional NIH funding.
| Project | Principal Investigator |
| Studies of the SARS Receptor ACE2 | Michael Farzan, Ph.D., Brigham and Women's Hospital |
| Novel Ways to Optimize CTL Response to Vaccinia Virus | William R. Green, Ph.D., Dartmouth Medical School |
| Development of Multi-Gene Subunit-Based Smallpox Vaccine | Shan Lu, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Medical School |
| SARS Coronavirus Pathogenesis in African Green Monkeys | Keith Mansfield, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School |
| Chemical Structure of Anthrax Spore Polysaccharide | Julia Wang, Ph.D., Brigham and Women's Hospital |
| Genome-scale genetic deletion system for virulent Y. pestis | Brian, J. Akerley, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Medical School |
| Inhibitors of Ebola Virus Infection | James M. Cunningham, M.D., Brigham and Women's Hospital |
| Therapeutic Agents for Smallpox | Kenneth Marc Kaye, A.B., M.D., Brigham and Women’s Hospital |
| Regulation of drug resistance and virulence in Y. pestis | Stuart B. Levy, M.D., Tufts University School of Medicine |
| Inhibitors of the Yersinia Phosphatase | Christoper Seto, Ph.D., Brown University |
| Environmental regulation in Francisella tularensis | Eric Rubin, M.D., Ph.D., Harvard School of Public Health |
| Novel antiviral targets in the polymerase of “Category A” Arenaviruses | Sean Whelan, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School |