District of Columbia Center for AIDS Research (DC CFAR) investigator Rebecca Lynch, PhD, assistant professor of microbiology, immunology, and tropical medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, was awarded an R21 grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NIH.
The grant will support Lynch’s research project titled “Effects of Boosting Mucosal Immunity by Microbiota Manipulation on B-Cell Responses to the HIV-1 Vaccine.”
The R21 grant encourages exploratory and developmental research by providing support for the early and conceptual stages of project development.
Lynch’s project will look at the effects of manipulating the microbiome on the response of antibodies to vaccination. She hopes the data generated from this project will provide critical new information regarding the role of the microbiome in adjuvant design and vaccine response, as well as provide the rationale for ongoing clinical trials involving microbiome alteration.
