Pilot funding has been awarded to two highly meritorious proposals, submitted in response to the COBRE Small Grants Program funding opportunity announcement (FOA).

Mukesh Kumar, Ph.D.
Guinea Pig Model of In Utero Zika Virus Infection

Saguna Verma, Ph.D.
RNA-seq Analysis of Persisten…

Support from the COBRE Small Grants Program to two investigators has been successfully leveraged into NIH awards.

1R21NS099838-01 (Mukesh Kumar, Ph.D.)
Defining the Function of Schlafen4 in the Pathogenesis of Flavivirus Encephalitis
Members of the Flavivirus genus are leading causes of epi…

More than 25 genetically distinct hantaviruses have been discovered in shrews and moles (order Eulipotyphla) in Eurasia, Africa and North America. More recently, divergent lineages of hantaviruses have been detected in insectivorous bats (order Chiroptera). Because some of these hantavirus-infected …

The recent discovery of genetically distinct hantaviruses in multiple species of shrews and moles (order Eulipotyphla, families Soricidae and Talpidae) prompted a further exploration of their host diversification and geographic distribution by analyzing lung tissues from 376 fruit bats representing …

Novel hantaviruses, recently detected in moles (order Eulipotyphla, family Talpidae) from Europe, Asia, and North America would predict a broader host range and wider ecological diversity. Employing RT-PCR, archival frozen tissues from the Chinese shrew mole (Uropsilus soricipes), broad-footed mole …

Despite the medical urgency presented by cubozoan envenomations, ineffective and contradictory first-aid management recommendations persist. A critical barrier to progress has been the lack of readily available and reproducible envenomation assays that (1) recapitulate live-tentacle stings; (2) allo…