New Scientific Program in 2001:Global Infectious Disease

For the past three years, the Ellison Medical Foundation has been actively engaged in supporting research on the biology of aging. The Foundation is now pleased to announce the addition of another major program to its growing portfolio, namely Molecular Pathogenesis and Global Infectious Disease. As with the EMF-Aging project, EMF-GID will center on the most basic research on molecular and cellular mechanisms of disease, informed by the vision of how this can ameliorate some of humankind's most pressing problems. Special attention will be afforded to tuberculosis, malaria and parasitoses which account for much of the world's morbidity, and are grossly neglected in federally funded research in the U.S

Both projects will be overseen by a science advisory board comprised of Dr. Richard Sprott, Executive Director, Ellison Medical Foundation; Joshua Lederberg, Board Chairman, Rockefeller University (Nobel Prize 1958); Eric Kandel, Columbia University (Nobel Prize 2000); Arnold Levine, Rockefeller University; George Martin, University of Washington; and Gerald Weissmann, NYU School of Medicine.

For the present, awards will be mainly confined to U.S.- based institutions, but special attention will be given to encouraging collaborations with partner-institutions overseas offering the opportunity for exchange of students and training that merges laboratory skills and field experience. The Foundation, as in the past, will work closely with government agencies, international bodies and societies and other foundations with shared goals.

The principal vehicle of support will be the subvention of individual research scholars in the full range from graduate students to established investigators. This will be supplemented by awards for conferences, publications and electronic communications, special training courses and infrastructure support for scientific-community oriented resources. The Oracle Corporation is already providing support for the www.promedmail.org web site which promotes rapid communication of information about new disease outbreaks among infectious disease specialists worldwide.

The following set of themes and sub themes is illustrative; the EMF-GID board welcomes suggestions from the scientific community about innovative conceptual approaches to meet the GID challenge.

	Any fundamental studies on exotic microbes and diseases*
	Our microbiome: natural microflora and pathogen ecology and evolution
	Therapeutic role of probiotics
	Diet, nutrition and immunity
	Implications of disease eradication
	Zoonoses: wildlife and human disease
	Comparative immunology
	Threats from newly explored habitats
	Host factors, human genomics and disease susceptibility
	Signaling and gene flow between parasites & hosts
	Parasite molecular mimicry
	Fever and other symptomatology
	Plasmid and phage determinants of virulence
	Phylogeny and ultimate origins of viruses
	New concepts for antivirals and antiparasitics
	Nosocomial infection and sanitary precaution
	Dyshygenic abuse of antibiotics and microbicides

*Investigations on model systems and familiar diseases are by no means precluded, but should be informed by a vision of their applicability to the global disease burden.

It is expected that the inauguration of the Global Infectious Disease Program will attract the caliber of basic researchers whose work holds great promise for scientific breakthroughs leading to amelioration of infectious disease worldwide.