Photo: Bryan Goodchild
Read Pukkila-Worley, MD, professor of medicine, is the recipient of a five-year, $3 million award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support his research on understanding how bacteria cause infectious disease and how host cells have evolved mechanisms to survey for the presence of an active infection to activate innate immunity.
Specifically, the grant supports Dr. Pukkila-Worley’s 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.
The R01 research grant is a renewal of an initial award Pukkila-Worley received in 2021. His grant renewal application scored in the top one percentile.
“It is a great feeling to have this grant renewed and an important recognition of the amazing scientists in my lab. They're an extraordinary group of individuals who are dedicated to our science, our research program, and this grant renewal reflects their hard work,” Pukkila-Worley said.
Pukkila-Worley is an infectious disease physician-scientist who joined UMass Chan Medical School in 2014. He serves as an attending physician on the infectious disease inpatient consult service at UMass Memorial Medical Center. His laboratory, funded by the NIH for more than 10 years, studies host-pathogen interactions and bacterial pathogenesis. He is the director of the NIH-funded Medical Scientist Training Program at UMass Chan.
