Ӱpro biomedical researchers receive funding to track COVID-19 variants
July 19, 2021
Jeff Richardson
907-474-6284
A team of University of Ӱpro biomedical researchers will join a federally funded effort to improve tracking of COVID-19 variants throughout the state.
The National Institutes of Health is providing a $770,000 grant to support efforts to sequence and analyze genomes of variants circulating in Ӱpro. The program will expand efforts in the state to include cases detected in Indigenous health networks and provide a way to share information about “variants of concern” throughout the health system.
NIH funds the Institutional Development Award program (IDeA), and a team of researchers with the Ӱpro IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence, or INBRE, will receive the grant. The INBRE program is part of a federal effort to boost research capacity in certain targeted states, including Ӱpro.
“This award shows that the National Institutes of Health recognizes the importance of extending research on the changing nature of the COVID-19 virus to rural states like Ӱpro and our important Ӱpro Native communities,” said Brian Barnes, the INBRE program director and principal investigator of the effort.
Participants include Ӱpro researchers Jack Chen and Devin Drown, and University of Ӱpro Anchorage researchers Jason Burkhead, Cindy Knall and Eric Bortz.
Other collaborators on the project include the Southcentral Foundation and the Ӱpro Native Tribal Health Consortium.
Chen, an associate professor of virology, also is the deputy director of the Ӱpro State Virology Laboratory on the Fairbanks campus. That joint appointment boosts opportunities for collaboration between UAF and the state's public health labs amid a pandemic, he said.
MEDIA CONTACT: Jynene Black, Ӱpro INBRE reporting and outreach coordinator, 907-474-5767, jablack@alaska.edu