Department of Internal Medicine Internal Medicine Researchers Receive UI Gene Therapy Center Seed Grants  Anton P. McCaffrey, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Division of Infectious Diseases
7/26/2006 The University of Iowa Center for Gene Therapy of Cystic Fibrosis and Other Genetic Diseases has awarded grants for six pilot projects aimed at advancing gene therapy research. Five UI scientists and one from the University of Toronto each will receive $32,000. The pilot program has been running for eight years and is funded through a center grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. The pilot grants provide seed money for researchers to pursue innovative but untested ideas related to gene therapy. Results from such pilot studies can open up new areas of research and often form the basis of subsequent projects that receive external support. Grant recipients include Internal Medicine researchers Scott Harper and Anton McCaffrey. Scott Harper, Ph.D., a UI research investigator in internal medicine, will develop gene therapy delivery methods that control the amount of RNA interference (RNAi) expressed in treated tissue. RNAi is a biological mechanism that can selectively turn off disease-causing genes and has the potential to treat many types of dominant disorders. Controlling the amount of RNAi in a diseased tissue will help prevent problems caused by excess amounts of RNAi. Anton McCaffrey, Ph.D., UI assistant professor of internal medicine, will investigate a new approach for treating hepatitis B infection, which the World Health Organization lists as the ninth leading cause of death worldwide. McCaffrey and his team will design a hybrid protein to seek out and break up a specific type of viral DNA that allows hepatitis B virus to lurk within cells and cause reinfection. |
