UH receives $9.6 million grant
By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer
The University of Hawai'i has landed a $9.6 million federal grant that will launch the first programs toward creating a global center of excellence in emerging infectious tropical diseases, particularly mosquito-borne infections such as dengue fever and West Nile virus.
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The grant, to be administered over five years, will establish a Pacific Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Research as part of the John A. Burns School of Medicine. It was awarded as part of the National Institutes of Health Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence program.
"This grant will help us lay the foundation for establishing the medical school and UH as a global leader in research and training for tropical medicine and infectious diseases," said medical school dean Dr. Edwin Cadman.
"This grant will help us lay the foundation for establishing the medical school and UH as a global leader in research and training for tropical medicine and infectious diseases," said medical school dean Dr. Edwin Cadman.
The center, in turn, will become part of a three-pronged Asia-Pacific Institute of Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease to be headed by internationally known researcher Duane J. Gubler, who joins UH in January. He is considered one of the country's foremost authorities on dengue fever and is a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Fort Collins, Colo., infectious disease laboratory.
"We're hoping to develop a regional center for excellence, both for research and for public health response in the region," said Dr. Richard Yanagihara, who will head this research arm of the new institute.
"Hawai'i, in the center of the Pacific, is a natural sentinel point for monitoring such diseases. With the recent outbreak of SARS, Hawai'i can very much be a big player."
Yanagihara said Gubler intends to develop a regional dengue diagnostic lab here in partnership with the state Department of Health.
Part of the program will include outreach and research partnerships in Asia, particularly Vietnam, where dengue is epidemic.
The UH Medical School will work closely with the health department and the Cancer Research Center of Hawai'i, which is part of the university, to build the institute. The other two areas being considered for primary work include a vaccine research center and a center for research on AIDS, still under discussion.
Yanagihara said the new institute also would re-establish the university and medical school as a pre-eminent influence in tropical diseases, a reputation it held in the 1980s when Gubler and Leon Rosen, formerly with the National Institutes of Health, worked at UH.
Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.
