The Center for Evolutionary and Theoretical Immunology (CETI), housed in the UNM Biology Department, was recently awarded a five-year, $10.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) Centers for Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) program.
This is the second COBRE award received by CETI, the first $10.3 million was awarded in October 2003. It assures CETI’s ability to further strengthen, consolidate and position itself as one of the world’s preeminent centers in evolutionary and theoretical immunological research.
Under the direction of Principal Investigator Eric Loker and co-PI and infrastructure core director Rob Miller, CETI, which is the only COBRE funded program on UNM’s main campus, involves researchers from UNM’s Biology and Computer Science Departments, and theoretical biologists from Los Alamos National Lab (LANL).
“The new CETI award, coming in a cash-starved economic climate, offers our research community some very creative possibilities that we would simply not have otherwise,” said Loker. “It allows us to continue to develop and enhance an internationally prominent presence for UNM in the growing field of evolutionary immunology.
“The award also provides a wonderful opportunity for UNM scientists to enhance collaborations with LANL, to assist in the building of a strengthened biomedical research presence on our main campus, including the training of students and junior scientists, and to work creatively with other UNM scientists to build new programs that will enhance UNM’s presence in immunology, parasitology and the biology of infectious diseases.”
Designed to study the evolution and diversification of immune systems across all organismal life, researchers at CETI seek to understand the functional principles underlying immune systems and their interactions with pathogens, based on both theoretical and comparative approaches. Since 2003 CETI investigators have published more than 450 scientific papers, including several in the most prestigious scientific journals such as Science, Nature and Proceedings of the National Acadamy of Sciences.
CETI scientists have made fundamental contributions to the study of mammalian genome and immune system organization, and by focusing on marsupials and egg-laying mammals have provided unique evolutionary insights for the evolution of placental mammals. They have discovered new kinds of immune receptors, and provided new evidence to indicate that the immune systems of invertebrates, which often are involved as vectors of disease, are capable of more sophisticated and diverse responses to pathogens than previously thought.
CETI’s theoreticians have played an important role in advancing our basic understanding of virus population dynamics in humans, how signals are propagated in immune cells to allow their eventual activation, and how design principles of immune systems share properties with computer security systems.
In addition to its role in creating new knowledge, another of CETI’s goals is to build and enhance the biomedical enterprise in the state of New Mexico. Therefore, some of the new funds will be used to hire two new tenure track, research-competitive faculty members, this at a time when faculty hires are otherwise very scarce. These new faculty members will add to CETI’s critical mass of researchers as well as add to the UNM community as a whole. The new funds will also be used to provide research support for junior faculty and to establish a new Seed Grant Program designed to support young investigators from UNM and LANL and help improve their chances of securing their own biomedical funding.
“CETI has given me the opportunity to apply biological theory and computational models to increase our understanding of how diseases progress and epidemics spread between different species. This has practical implications for how we fight emerging pathogens like West Nile Virus,” said Melanie Moses, assistant professor, Computer Science and a CETI mentored faculty member. “CETI has enabled cross disciplinary training of students in Biology and Computer Science and provided mentoring from world class researchers in immunology and epidemiology.”
Additional plans call for support of core facilities, including the support of the Molecular Biology Facility which provides services such as automated DNA sequencing to the entire UNM community, for improvement and upgrades in other vital institutional research infrastructure, including the UNM proteomics and mass spectroscopy facility, and to support the acquisition of the National Parasite Collection by UNM’s Museum of Southwestern Biology, which will help to increase UNM’s international research prominence.
In addition to its core funding, CETI-affiliated researchers have been awarded $14 million in federally funded grants since its 2003 inception. CETI has worked closely with the UNM administration to leverage another $19.4 million in building funds to erect a 38,000 square foot addition to the Biology building. The Biology addition that houses CETI has also been designated as the first LEEDS gold-certified building on campus.
“Recently several CETI investigators, including students, attended an international comparative immunology conference held in Europe,” said Miller. “It was clear from the interactions with colleagues from around the world that UNM and the state of New Mexico has become an internationally recognized center in the field of evolutionary immunology. It would have been difficult to build the critical mass of investigators necessary to achieve this level of recognition without the support from Federal programs such as the NIH NCRR COBRE. We are really pleased that the NIH has recognized our accomplishments as well by renewing its support.”
NCRR, part of NIH, provides laboratory scientists and clinical researchers with the resources and training they need to understand, detect, treat and prevent a wide range of diseases. NCRR supports all aspects of translational and clinical research, connecting researchers, patients and communities across the nation. For more information visit: National Center for Research Resources.
For more information on CETI or upcoming lectures and events, visit: CETI or contact program manager, Jennifer Kavka at, (505) 277-5508 and jekavka@unm.edu.
Media Contact: Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821; e-mail: scarr@unm.edu