The Brook Lab is excited to announce that we have been awarded an NIH NIAID New Innovators Award (DP2) for ‘Crossing scales to predict and prevent bat viruses zoonoses in a Madagascar ecosystem.’ This opportunity funds early stage investigators to embark on ‘High Risk High Reward’ projects outside the scope of more traditional funding mechanisms.
Over the next 5 years, we’ll be working to (1) decipher the population-level transmission dynamics of potentially zoonotic henipaviruses, filoviruses, and coronaviruses in Madagascar fruit bats, (2) model the within-host energetic constraints that drive seasonal pulses in bat virus shedding, and (3) eradicate potentially zoonotic henipaviruses from Malagasy Eidolon dupreanum (see below) through application of a multivalent henipavirus vaccine.
We’ll be collaborating with the lab of Dr. Hector Aguilar Carreno at Cornell University to develop and deploy this vaccine.
Stay tuned for all the exciting work ahead!