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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a $100,000, one-year Grand Challenges Explorations grant to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to fund a pharmacy researcher’s efforts to halt pathogens invading the body by stopping them in the mucous membranes.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a $100,000, one-year Grand Challenges Explorations grant to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to fund a pharmacy researcher’s efforts to halt pathogens invading the body by stopping them in the mucous membranes.

The project, led by Samuel Lai, Ph.D., assistant professor in the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, is among 65 grants announced by the Gates Foundation in the fifth funding round of Grand Challenges Explorations, an initiative to help scientists around the world explore bold and largely unproven ways to improve health in developing countries.

“Fighting viruses after they have reached their targets for infection is like trying to defend a castle by locking the interior doors but leaving the gate open,” Lai said. “We can fend off viruses much better if we could just close the front gate.”

Most infections do not begin in the blood or enter through undamaged skin. Instead, they are transmitted at exposed mucosal surfaces such as the pulmonary, gastrointestinal and reproductive tracts, Lai said. That makes mucus –  the slimy and sticky secretions that line mucosal surfaces – the first line of defense against pathogens such as viruses.

Despite the importance of mucous membranes in protecting against foreign substances, few people have thought to take advantage of mucus in developing methods to prevent infections, Lai said. By better understanding how viruses can be trapped in mucus secretions, he believes it might be possible to develop better methods to prevent the spread of infections by, for example, developing new microbicides or improving the effectiveness of vaccines.

For details and multimedia, go to: http://pharmacy.unc.edu/news/schoolnews/lais-gates-grant-will-put-viruses-in-sticky-situation

Grand Challenges Explorations: www.grandchallenges.org/explorations

UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy contact: David Etchison, (919) 966-7744, david_etchison@unc.edu
News Services contact: Patric Lane, (919) 962-8596, patric_lane@unc.edu

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