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We are delighted to announce that Manchester University lecturer Dr Margherita Bertuzzi has been awarded a New Investigator Research Grant by the Medical Research Council (MRC) to study Aspergillus fumigatus-epithelial interactions, how these influence immune responses and how they are dysregulated in disease.

Airborne spores of the most prominent fungal pathogen of human lungs, Aspergillus fumigatus, are a major component of the air we breathe and are responsible for more than 3 million chronic infections and initiate over 200,000 invasive diseases annually worldwide. Some groups of severely immunocompromised patients, such as those undergoing bone marrow transplants, have just a 10% survival rate once a fungal infection is contracted.

“Remarkably, while fungal diseases cause more deaths annually than tuberculosis or malaria, we still lack effective drugs to treat many of these infections,” said Dr Bertuzzi, who is principal investigator of the three-year project. “Obtaining first-in-field insights into the mechanistic basis of the antifungal potency of the airway epithelium will open avenues for the development of novel immunomodulatory therapeutic strategies to facilitate treatment of lung diseases caused by Aspergillus fumigatus and other respiratory pathogens.”

The New Investigator Research Grant is a competitive award aimed at researchers who are in the process of becoming independent Principal Investigators. The award will support Dr Bertuzzi’s research which focuses on the epithelial interactions with inhaled respiratory pathogens and the role of these events in health and disease; how these interactions affect communication with other components of human immune and inflammatory cascades, and the technical know-how to translate this knowledge into human benefit.

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