$932K Dept of Defense Grant to Study Immune Dysregulation in Gulf War Illness

Lubov Nathanson, Ph.D. Associate Professor in the Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine (KPCOM) at NSU, was recently awarded a $932K Department of Defense (DoD) grant to study immune dysregulation in Gulf War Illness (GWI). This award was made through the DoD’s CDMRP Gulf War Illness Research Program.

 

Tell me briefly about your recent grant-funded projects.

During the Persian Gulf War (1990-1991) American soldiers were exposed to many harmful environmental factors. Of the approximately 800,000 troops that were deployed to the Kuwait region, it is estimated that about 25-30% came back ill and continue to be affected by this chronic condition. However, we do not fully understand the mechanisms of this disease, and current medical treatment only addresses symptoms.

This newly-funded DoD grant builds on my prior (and still ongoing) DoD grant in which I work with a collaborator at Georgetown University, Dr. James Baraniuk who recruits GWI patients and healthy controls and does medical evaluation of them. He collects their blood and separates out the lymphocytes and plasma. These samples are then sent to me, and I sort the lymphocytes into major subgroups to compare RNA gene expression in these cell subgroups between patients with GWI and healthy controls.

The recent award will be based on the same samples but go deeper than my prior work. I will employ single-cell genomics to look at gene expression in every cell type in lymphocytes. I will look to see what genes are expressed differently for healthy controls and diseased patients. Using this technique, I will learn which exact immune cells are causing the problems in GWI. Furthermore, these two projects—single-cell genomic work and prior work (sorting cells)—will be used to validate each other.

The hope is that these two projects will lay the groundwork for developing better therapeutic targets, such as those that affect certain types of cells or change gene expression in certain types of lymphocytes. This would help doctors to treat the mechanisms of the disease, and not just the resulting symptoms.

 

Who is working with you on this project?

As with my prior DoD award, I’ll be working with Dr. Baraniuk from Georgetown University to obtain GWI patient blood samples. I have a new Research Associate starting in October along with a Research Fellowship student from KPCOM who will be supporting the project activities. I also engage NSU undergraduate students frequently on my projects and I’ll be recruiting some for this project as well.

I want to give a special thanks to Dr. Robin Krueger, her predecessor Dr. Sara Tavakoli, and Dr. Bojie Dai who were very helpful assisting me in collecting preliminary data that was used as a foundation for this new grant proposal. I also want to extend my thanks to Dr. Robert Speth and Dr. Toshihisa Kawai who provided valuable edits to the proposal draft.

 

How does this project connect with your other work at NSU?

Along with co-authors Derek Van Booven (University of Miami), Oskar Zarnowski and Melanie Perez (Oskar and Melanie were Research fellows from KPCOM), Sean Riegle (DO student from KPCOM), Kyle Hansotia [undergraduate student from the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences (HCAS)], Leonor Sarria (former Research Associate in my group, now at University of Miami), Tali Finger (former high school student, now a student at Yale University), Fanny Collado (Veterans Affairs Foundation), Dr. Mary Ann Fletcher, and Dr. Nancy Klimas, I recently published a paper in Life Sciences titled “The effect of stress on the transcriptomes of circulating immune cells in patients with Gulf War Illness,” where we found novel immune and inflammatory markers of Gulf War Illness pathophysiology.

My other work at NSU involves teaching genetics through the KPCOM Interprofessional Education program and I am also an adjunct professor who teaches undergraduates in HCAS.

 

What advice do you have for other grant seekers at NSU?

Endurance and perseverance! So far, of the two National Institutes of Health (NIH) and three DoD grants that I have won as lead PI, I was not awarded any of them on the first try. Each of them I had to revise and resubmit before I found success. However, that is not to say that all my resubmissions have led to grant awards. I still have to dedicate many long hours to writing each grant proposal, but none of them are guarantees; every grant I’m awarded feels like winning the lottery.

 

What is the next grant proposal or project on your agenda?

It’s still too early to say where these two projects will lead, but a possible next step would be to consider proposing potential treatments for GWI based on the findings of these mechanism studies.