News Release

Brigham and Women's Hospital researcher receives NIH Transformative Research Project Award

Researchers in the dermatology department at BWH receive $6 million grant to fund innovative research

Grant and Award Announcement

Brigham and Women's Hospital

Boston, MA - The National Institutes of Health has announced the recipients of the 2011 Transformative Research Award Projects. This innovative research program was established in 2009 to support exceptionally innovative, high risk, original and/or unconventional research projects, and is supported by the NIH Common Fund. These five-year grants, which do not have fixed budget caps, support projects with the potential to overturn scientific dogma and to have broad impact throughout medical science. Brigham and Women's Hospital physician and researcher Thomas S. Kupper, MD, is one of 17 recipients nationally, receiving support for his proposed study of tissue resident T cells and their role as a first line of defense against viral, fungal and bacterial infections, as well as certain cancers, and their potential in the development of better and more effective vaccines.

Very recently, Transformative Research Project co-investigator and BWH physician and researcher Rachael Clark, MD, PhD, made the surprising discovery that normal human skin contains 20 billion memory T cells, more than twice the total number of T cells that circulate in blood. "This was a paradigm-shifting discovery, an observation that was hiding in plain sight. We are now beginning to understand that similar unappreciated populations of memory T cells live in lung, GI tract, and reproductive mucosa", says Dr. Kupper, an internationally recognized immunologist who is also the Chairman of Dermatology at BWH. "We believe these disease-fighting T cells were generated by past encounters with infectious agents, and represent our first and best protection against subsequent infections."

Currently, most vaccines are designed principally to help the body produce circulating antibodies, which are made by B cells. In this Transformative Research Project, Dr. Kupper and colleagues propose that for many infections, diseases and cancer, vaccines should be developed with the goal of generating long-lived populations of protective tissue resident memory T cells. Drs. Kupper and Clark are joined by BWH Dermatology faculty members and co-investigators Clare Baecher-Allan, PhD, and Robert Fuhlbrigge, MD., PhD, on this $6 million, five year research project.

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More information on the Transformative Research Projects Award is at http://commonfund.nih.gov/T-R01.

Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) is a 793-bed nonprofit teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School and a founding member of Partners HealthCare, an integrated health care delivery network. BWH is the home of the Carl J. and Ruth Shapiro Cardiovascular Center, the most advanced center of its kind. BWH is committed to excellence in patient care with expertise in virtually every specialty of medicine and surgery. The BWH medical preeminence dates back to 1832, and today that rich history in clinical care is coupled with its national leadership in quality improvement and patient safety initiatives and its dedication to educating and training the next generation of health care professionals. Through investigation and discovery conducted at its Biomedical Research Institute (BRI), www.brighamandwomens.org/research , BWH is an international leader in basic, clinical and translational research on human diseases, involving more than 900 physician-investigators and renowned biomedical scientists and faculty supported by more than $537 M in funding. BWH is also home to major landmark epidemiologic population studies, including the Nurses' and Physicians' Health Studies and the Women's Health Initiative. For more information about BWH, please visit www.brighamandwomens.org


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