At CSU, the research will include a multidisciplinary team of at least 20 researchers, students and staff, including Assistant Professors Michael Lyons and Brooke Anderson, Research Scientists Carolina Mehaffy and Andres Obregon Henao, Associate Professor Diane Ordway, and Corey Broeckling, director of the Proteomics and Metabolomics Facility.

Henao-Tamayo, whose TB research has been focused on vaccines, said the project aims to combine expertise from all over the world. It will include experiments to better understand previous research she conducted in collaboration with the late Ian Orme, a CSU University Distinguished Professor, to study environmental mycobacteria, which live in water and soil, and how these organisms may interfere immunologically with the protection that the BCG vaccine provides against TB.

Podell, who earned doctorates in veterinary medicine and pathology from CSU, said the initiative will be perhaps the most comprehensive pathology assessment of vaccine and TB immunity ever done.

Podell and Henao-Tamayo said that the award reflects not only the outstanding reputation of CSUs Mycobacteria Research labs, but also provides a boost of recognition for the program.

Brendan and I were both trained in these labs, and were now leading the charge on this new research, said Henao-Tamayo.

Additional partners include Oxford University; Public Health England; Statistical Center for HIV/AIDS Research and Prevention at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard; Denver Veterans Affairs Medical Center; National Jewish Health in Denver, and La Jolla Institute for Immunology.

NIAID recently awarded contracts totaling $30 million for the first year to provide up to seven years of support for three Immune Mechanisms of Protection Against Mycobacterium tuberculosis (IMPAc-TB) Centers. The Centers aim to better explain the immune responses required for protection from TB-causing Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Seattle Childrens Hospital will lead research for the other two centers.

Excerpt from:
CSU lands $1.2 million in NIH funding to advance work on a new tuberculosis vaccine - Source