Researchers receive grants from Biotech Center

GREENVILLE, N.C.   (Sept. 16, 2013)   —   Two East Carolina University researchers have received nearly $200,000 in grants from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center to study lung disease and cancer. 

Dr. Dianne Walters, an assistant professor of physiology at the Brody School of Medicine at ECU, received $100,000 for a study that will use inhalation exposure of carbon nanotubes, or CNT, to determine appropriate mouse models and identify susceptibility genes involved in CNT-induced lung disease that may be investigated as therapeutic targets. 

Dr. John Wiley, a geneticist and professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the Brody School of Medicine, received $96,500 to investigate ways to change tumor cells so that they show a foreign, non-human molecule called alphaGal on their surface. This surface molecule will enable the tumor cells to be detected and destroyed by patients’ own immune responses as a new type of cancer immunotherapy. 

Their awards were part of $3.58 million in loans and grants the center awarded during the final quarter of the fiscal year that ended June 30.