MSU Biomedical Research Initiative on Track with $1.1 Million Grant

Michigan State University (MSU) is using a $1.1 million grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH) to perfect a health innovation that would allow researchers to track the path of diseases. Researchers will start by tracking sleeping sickness hotbeds in Kenya.

According to excerpts from the article:

The four-year project will analyze factors such as climate change, land use and distribution of the tsetse fly in the east African country.

The bite of the tsetse spreads the potentially fatal “sleeping sickness,” or trypanosomiasis, to humans and livestock, although it is currently impossible to predict where the disease will surface next, said Joseph Messina, MSU associate professor of geography and lead researcher.

“In the long run, the goal of the model is to actually predict the areas where people or animals will be at risk for the disease,” Messina said. “So one, 10 or 50 years from now, if you’re a government planner and you’re building a disease-control program, you’ll have that information.”

Because the research draws MSU faculty from multiple departments and areas of expertise – including climatology, entomology and epidemiology – it falls in line with the NIH “Roadmap for Medical Research,” Messina said. The federal initiative promotes interdisciplinary health research.

The seeds of the project were sown at a February 2006 meeting in Nairobi, where Messina and other MSU researchers gathered to brainstorm research ideas relating to Africa. The meeting was supported with a grant from the Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies, which also supports interdisciplinary research.

"The NIH funding awarded to Dr. Messina and his team indicates that the seed funding we have provided to researchers through the Health and Biomedical Research Initiative is beginning to pay dividends,” said Ian Gray, vice president for research and graduate studies. “Our faculty are very competitive and with the proper research infrastructure they will garner their share of competitive federal grants."

Read the entire article here.

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