ATS Foundation Research Program announces unrestricted grant recipients for the 2019 cycle

Feb. 13, 2020 — The ATS Foundation Research Program has announced that 17 researchers have been awarded one-year $40,000 Unrestricted Research Grants to advance pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine.

These grants span basic, clinical, and translational research in adult and pediatric medicine. Applicants consider how their research will provide novel approaches to challenging lung diseases, foster health care equality, and improve patient outcomes.

Since its inception in 2004, the ATS Foundation Research Program has awarded $19.3 million to 263 investigators, both in the U.S. and internationally. These researchers have gone on to receive $330 million in federal funding.

“The ATS grants are given to early investigators and can be an enormous stepping stone to a successful career,” says Dean Schraufnagel, MD, chair of the ATS Foundation and professor of medicine at the University of Illinois Chicago.

“They indicate that the research and researcher are recognized by a review team of a leading scientific society in respiratory medicine. Getting an ATS grant greatly increases the ability to compete for major grants from the National Institutes of Health and other national and international agencies.”

“The quality and scientific rigor of the research grants awarded this year were outstanding. The committee was pleased to receive proposals that represented the broad spectrum of clinical and basic research interests of the ATS,” said Scientific Advisory Committee Chair Karen M. Ridge, PhD, of Northwestern University. “We are excited to see the imprint our awardees make in the fields of pulmonary, critical care, and sleep.”

The ATS Foundation Research Program Unrestricted Grant recipients for the 2019 grant cycle are:

Unrestricted Grant: PULMONARY

Deepthi Alapati, MBBS | Nemours/Alfred I duPont Hospital for Children

Optimizing Airway Delivery of CRISPR-Cas9 Gene Editing Reagents Using Non-viral Vectors

Maurizio Chioccioli, PhD | Yale University

A quantitative framework for diagnosing ciliary beating defects in Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia

Raghu Chivukula, MD, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital

Mechanistic Analysis of Dysfunctional Lysosomes in Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome

Robert Guzy, MD, PhD | University of Chicago

FGF Regulation of Myofibroblast Differentiation in Pulmonary Fibrosis

Jinho Kim, PhD | Stevens Institute of Technology

Regeneration of Donor Lungs Refused for Transplantation Through Targeted Cell Replacement

Sydney Montesi, MD | Massachusetts General Hospital

Collagen-targeted PET Imaging in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis

Crystal North, MD | Massachusetts General Hospital

Environmental Influences on Respiratory Disease: Interactions between Air Pollution and HIV

Sarah O’Beirne, MD, PhD | Weill Cornell Medicine

Small Airway Biology Underlying Enhanced Female Susceptibility to Smoking-Related Lung Disease

Franziska Rosser, MD, MPH | UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh

Air Quality Index and Childhood Asthma: An Intervention

Daniel Schneider, MD, PhD | University of Michigan

Influenza Modulates the Host Defense Function of Alveolar Macrophage-derived Extracellular Vesicles

Anna Volerman, MD | University of Chicago

An RCT of Virtual Teach-to-Goal versus Brief Instruction for Children with Asthma in Clinics

Matt Zinter, MD | University of California, San Francisco

Metatranscriptomic Evaluation of Lung Health in Pediatric Hematopoietic Cell Transplant Candidates

Unrestricted Grant: CRITICAL CARE

Mark Hepokoski, MD | University of California, San Diego

Extracellular Mitochondrial DNA in ARDS Due to Sepsis

Edy Kim, MD, PhD | Brigham and Women’s Hospital

mTOR Drives Post-Sepsis Immunosuppression

Gary Weissman, MD | University of Pennsylvania

Human and System Factors Contributing to Delays in Antibiotics for Patients Suspected of Sepsis

Unrestricted Grant: SLEEP

Alex Gileles-Hillel, MD | Hadassah Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel

Counteracting Intermittent Hypoxia-Induced Adipose Tissue Dysfunction via VEGF-Mediated Angiogenisis

Christopher Schmickl, MD, PhD | University of California, San Diego

Rescuing OSA Patients Unable to Tolerate CPAP Using Endotype-Targeted Drug Therapy (RESCUE-Drug)

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