The College of Veterinary Medicine is a Grand Challenges Explorations winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Ralph A. Tripp, a professor of infectious diseases, will lead a team in pursuit of innovative global health and development research on norovirus.
Norovirus is a highly infectious disease and can be transmitted from an infected person, contaminated food or water or contact with contaminated surfaces. The illness can be serious for young children and older adults-and causes up to 200,000 deaths a year in children younger than age 5 in developing countries.
Tripp and his research team are receiving $100,000 to engineer mammalian cell lines that support norovirus and related enteric virus replication by silencing nonessential virus resistance genes in vaccine cell lines. While researchers have made advances in studying the virus and identifying some control measures, no efficient cell line exists currently to support studies for vaccine and therapeutic development.
