A University of Arizona Health Sciences-led program that provides schools with asthma inhalers to help students experiencing respiratory distress will be expanded and improved thanks to a $3.4 million grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, a division of the National Institutes of Health.

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has awarded $2.18 million to two researchers at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center for a project focused on a new drug treatment to protect the brain after a stroke.

A new role has been uncovered for a cell’s own RNA in fending off attacks by RNA viruses. Some of the cell’s RNA molecules, researchers found, help regulate antiviral signaling. These signals are part of the intricate coordination of immune responses against virus invasion. With RNA increasingly seen as both a drug and a druggable target, the new findings open the potential for RNA-based therapeutics for combating both infection and autoimmunity.