By DoM Communications | Date published: August 13, 2026
Fiachra Humphries and Lab Awarded Nearly $8 Million in NIH Grants
Fiachra Humphries, PhD, assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Innate Immunity, is a principal investigator on three National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants issued over six weeks starting June 11, totaling nearly $8 million. With these grants, Dr. Humphries and his lab will study potential treatments for Parkinson’s disease, lupus, and sepsis.
With a five-year, $3.8 million NIH R01 award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Humphries and his lab identified how the metabolite fumarate is a critical regulator of cell death; accumulating in the body and attaching to and inactivating specific proteins, thereby reducing inflammation. His lab has found that fumarate can regulate Parkinson’s disease.
In July, Dr. Humphries was awarded a two-year, $460,000 NIH R21 exploratory research grant to support his work studying a pathway he discovered called the non-canonical TLR (toll-like receptor) signaling pathway, which controls the transcription factor NRF2 and a scavenger receptor called macrophage receptor with collagenous structure (MARCO).
Most recently, Dr. Humphries was awarded another five-year, $3.6 million NIH R01 award to fund his continued research on MARCO and additional proteins controlled by the non-canonical TLR signaling pathway.
Please join us in recognizing Dr. Humphries and his colleagues!