E-Insight

October 2004

TB Research Group Receives $25 Million NIH Contract

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a research team at the Mycobacteria Research Laboratories in the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences a seven-year Vaccine Testing and Research Materials contract totaling $25,167,768 to support tuberculosis research. The contract is a renewal of an existing NIH contract initially awarded in 1992 and renewed in 1997.

"This is a continuation of an on-going program, though it is a large increase in the level of funding,” said Dr. John Belisle, Director of the Mycobacteria Research Laboratories and principal investigator for the NIH contract. “NIH support of our work at CSU has been substantial because we are one of the few sites - if not the only site - in the United States that has the facilities and expertise to look at broad aspects of tuberculosis.”

Tuberculosis is the leading bacterial killer in the world, infecting 10 million people and causing three million deaths annually. It is resurgent in developing countries and, in America , in prison populations, among the homeless, and in HIV/AIDS-infected patients.

The renewed NIH contract awarded to the Mycobacteria Research Laboratories focuses in three areas:

• The identification of novel products from Mycobacterium tuberculosis that are involved in the disease process or could be used as potential diagnostic or vaccine antigens.
• Provision of Mycobacterium tuberculosis products to tuberculosis investigators throughout the world.
• Evaluation of potential vaccine candidates using tuberculosis in animal models. As a part of the vaccine work, the team is charged with development of new methods and models to evaluate vaccines in special populations, including those who have already been exposed to tuberculosis, or vaccinated with BCG (an existing TB vaccine), or those who are immunodepressed (such as individuals with HIV/AIDS).

"Two of the primary co-principal investigators, Drs. Karen Dobos and Angelo Izzo, were hired specifically for management of specific aspects of our existing NIH contract and having them here at CSU definitely enabled us to increase our level of funding and be successful in this award,” said Dr. Belisle. “We look forward to hiring additional personnel in the second year of this contract to continue to expand our capabilities and build our program.”

In addition to Drs. Belisle, Dobos and Izzo, two other investigators, Drs. Ian Orme and Ric Slayden, are part of the research team on the NIH contract. The Mycobacteria Research Laboratories, which are unique given the amount of expertise focused on one problem, are part of the Infectious Diseases Program at Colorado State, a Program of Research and Scholarly Excellence. Last year, the Laboratories were awarded a five-year, $3 million NIH grant to conduct a pioneering study to examine the long-term effectiveness and safety of tuberculosis vaccines.