PFF/ATS Partner Grant Program
PFF Announced 2011 Pulmonary Fibrosis Grant Recipients
The Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation has made a longstanding commitment to drive new funding into pulmonary fibrosis research. To date, the PFF has directly funded, or has commitments to fund, more than $3 million to basic research programs in the United States with hopes of finding new treatments or a cure. Central to our research mission is our partnership with the American Thoracic Society and Coalition for Pulmonary Fibrosis to create the ATS/PFF/CPF Partner Research Program in Pulmonary Fibrosis.
The ATS Partner Research Program funds research that has a high likelihood to advance the understanding of PF, while enabling new faculty-level investigators to make the transition to careers as established investigators. Partnerships between junior and senior investigators were strongly encouraged, particularly for new investigators who were within 1 to 5 years of the completion of their medical training.
The ATS/PFF/CPF Partner Awards for Pulmonary Fibrosis are jointly funded by the PFF and CPF, and awards are made through a rigorous peer review application process administered by ATS. Each award is typically for $100,000 grant funded over a two-year term. Recipients of the 2011 ATS/PFF/CPF Partner Awards in Pulmonary Fibrosis are:
- Erica Herzog, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Pulmonary and Critical Care Division at Yale University (New Haven, CT), was awarded a Partner Grant to investigate emaphorin 7a and alternative macrophage activation in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis
- Steven Huang, MD, Lecturer in the Department of Medicine at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI), was awarded a Partner Grant to investigate the regulation and pattern of the DNA methylome in pulmonary fibrosis
- Philip Simonian, MD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Colorado Denver, was awarded a Partner Grant to investigate whether IL-22 offers protection from inflammation-induced pulmonary fibrosis
- Beiyun Zhou, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Pulmonary and Critical Care Division at the University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA), was awarded a Partner Grant to investigate whether endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress induces epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in alveolar epithelial cells (AEC), and their role in pulmonary fibrosis
"It is important to have these partnerships to increase the research funding available to investigators for this very difficult and deadly disease," said Daniel M. Rose, MD, President of the PFF." We are pleased that the peer review committee at ATS was able to select such high quality research to fund."
Investigators interested in submitting an application for the 2011 grant cycle (funding beginning Jan 2012) should contact the American Thoracic Society at 212-315-8966 to receive application guidelines and submission deadlines.
