Emerging and Tropical Infectious Diseases

University Of Texas Medical Br Galveston, Galveston TX

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Funds are requested for competitive renewal of a pre-doctoral Emerging and Tropical Infectious Diseases Training Program to support four trainees and three medical students each year. Training is provided by 16 Program faculty and 19 adjunct faculty. Emerging and tropical infections diseases encompass the broad-based multidisciplinary sciences of microbiology, pathology, immunology, molecular biology, epidemiology, entomology, vertebrate zoology, biochemistry and cell biology. The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston has made a major commitment to emerging and tropical diseases with the establishment of a Center for Tropical Diseases (CTD) that is a designated WHO Collaborating Center for Tropical Diseases. This multidisciplinary Center involves components of the medical and graduate schools (pathology, microbiology and immunology, internal medicine, pediatrics, preventive medicine and community health, and human biological chemistry and genetics). These disciplines provide an extensive resource for access of the trainees of this program to a very attractive array of research areas highly relevant to emerging and tropical infectious diseases. In addition, the faculty of the CTD has current federal grant support for research on emerging infections and tropical diseases in the United States, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela and parts of Central America and Africa. Thus the trainees will have opportunities to undertake a variety of potential research topics from laboratory-based studies at UTMB to field studies in the tropics. In this pre-doctoral program, formal course work is completed in the first two years affording the trainee with a comprehensive background in infectious disease concepts; laboratory rotations familiarize the students with state-of-the-art technology and facilities, and orient them to potential future mentors. The students select mentors during the first and early part of the second year and prepare and defend a research dissertation topic in consultation with a research committee. The research is then conducted, culminating in the dissertation and defense. The pre-doctoral trainees have access to state-of-the-art facilities at UTMB including arthropod containment level (ACL) -2, ACL-3, BSL-3, animal BSL-3 and BSL-4 ,and have opportunities to participate in research in the overseas tropics. They participate in multiple research seminar series, including Frontiers of Infectious Disease and Tropical Medicine, and they present their own research results in the above and other Research-in-Progress seminar series. In addition, to supporting pre-doctoral trainees, we are requesting support for three medical students to undertake short-term overseas research with Program Faculty at UTMB to encourage medical students to undertake a career as physician-scientists in the area of emerging and tropical infectious diseases. As with many of the former trainees of the faculty of the CTD, graduates will embark on post-doctoral fellowships, and assume positions of responsibility at medical and graduate schools, colleges and as staff of research institutes and industry.