July 10, 2018

Isaac Jensen, Derek Danahy and Dr. Vladimir Badovinac

Isaac Jensen is one of the recipients of the University of Iowa NIH Mechanisms of Parasitism T32. This training award seeks to understand the common themes of microbial virulence factors and host defense mechanisms amongst diverse microbial diseases. Isaac's research focuses on understanding how sepsis alters NK cell-mediated host defense against unrelated secondary infection.

Derek Danahy received a NIH Pre-Doctoral Training Grant T32AI007485 from the Immunology Graduate Program. This funding mechanism will provide a year of support to elucidate lesions in CD8 T cell-mediated immunity that underlie the immunoparalysis phase of sepsis.

Dr. Vladimir Badovinac received an Oberley Seed Grant Award from The Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center and its NCI Award P30CA08682. This award provides funding for the proposal titled “Define the mechanisms by which sepsis shapes previously-established tumor growth/development and antitumor CD8 T cell responses”. Despite cancer patients being 10-fold more likely to become septic, there are a lack of data to understand how sepsis influences tumor growth and/or underlying anti-tumor responses. This research headed by Derek Danahy will support Dr. Badovinac lab’s research objective to reveal sepsis-induced lesions in CD8 T cell-mediated immunity that increases patients susceptibility to secondary infections and cancer. The funding for this award will be from April 1, 2018 to March 31, 2019.