PI’s James Hagood, MD and Richard Boucher MD, at the UNC School of Medicine at Chapel Hill https://www.med.unc.edu are leading a multinational $3.5 million project funded through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) titled “Pediatric Inhalation Interface: Nose, Mouth, and Airways”.
The CZI project will research how the cells lining, the nose, mouth, and airways as well as the associated fluids interact to maintain respiratory health or play a role in diseases throughout childhood.
The international team of clinical scientists will collect samples from Brazil, Germany, India, Malawi, U.S, and Vietnam to obtain cutting edge single cell and spatial analyses of various cell types involved in human health and disease.
The data obtained from a variety of ancestral backgrounds will enable investigators around the world, as well as the UNC network find better ways to prevent and treat childhood diseases, including those caused by respiratory pathogens such as coronaviruses.
According to Richard Boucher MD, Director, UNC Marsico Lung Institute and the UNC Cystic Fibrosis Center, said, “We have learned a lot about SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, but we need to learn more about how this virus and others affect cells in the mouth and nose, where infection first takes hold, and how viruses and pollution affect human airways to produce chronic disease.”.
Dr. Hagood adds, “The Delta variant is causing more children to get sick than we saw earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic. We must learn about differences in cells lining airways of children in diverse populations to create new ways to treat current and future diseases.”