By DoM Communications | Date published: August 13, 2026
Read Pukkila-Worley Awarded $3 Million to Study Bacterial Pathogenesis
Read Pukkila-Worley, MD, professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Immunology, was recently awarded a five-year, $3 million award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support his research on understanding how bacteria cause infectious diseases and how host cells have evolved mechanisms to survey for the presence of an active infection to activate innate immunity.
According to Dr. Pukkila-Worley, the grant supports the hypothesis that intestinal epithelial cells possess the mechanisms to monitor physiological processes that, when they are disturbed, provide a cue that these cells are under attack.
“We think cells in the intestine recognize the active state of infection by surveying patterns of pathogenesis, which are disruptions to host physiology that accompany bacterial infection. The host knows it’s being attacked and has evolved mechanisms to monitor for these disruptions to identify bacteria that are actively causing disease,” Pukkila-Worley said.