杏吧原版 biomedical researchers receive funding to track COVID-19 variants
July 19, 2021
Jeff Richardson
907-474-6284
A team of University of 杏吧原版 biomedical researchers will join a federally funded effort to improve tracking of COVID-19 variants throughout the state.
The National Institutes of Health is providing a $770,000 grant to support efforts to sequence and analyze genomes of variants circulating in 杏吧原版. The program will expand efforts in the state to include cases detected in Indigenous health networks and provide a way to share information about 鈥渧ariants of concern鈥 throughout the health system.
NIH funds the Institutional Development Award program (IDeA), and a team of researchers with the 杏吧原版 IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence, or INBRE, will receive the grant. The INBRE program is part of a federal effort to boost research capacity in certain targeted states, including 杏吧原版.
鈥淭his award shows that the National Institutes of Health recognizes the importance of extending research on the changing nature of the COVID-19 virus to rural states like 杏吧原版 and our important 杏吧原版 Native communities,鈥 said Brian Barnes, the INBRE program director and principal investigator of the effort.
Participants include University of 杏吧原版 Fairbanks researchers Jack Chen and Devin Drown, and University of 杏吧原版 Anchorage researchers Jason Burkhead, Cindy Knall and Eric Bortz.
Other collaborators on the project include the Southcentral Foundation and the 杏吧原版 Native Tribal Health Consortium.
Chen, an associate professor of virology, also is the deputy director of the 杏吧原版 State Virology Laboratory on the Fairbanks campus. That joint appointment boosts opportunities for collaboration between UAF and the state's public health labs amid a pandemic, he said.
MEDIA CONTACT: Jynene Black, 杏吧原版 INBRE reporting and outreach coordinator, 907-474-5767, jablack@alaska.edu