In recent news, a multi-institutional team comprised of John Young, Ph.D., and Sumit Chanda, Ph.D., has been awarded a $21 million Program Project Grant dedicated to researching the early immune response to HIV via a systems biology approach.

The project is said to bring together a multidisciplinary team spanning the expertise of 13 different research groups at seven different research institutions- all in an effort to uncover the cellular protein machinery that represents the first line of defense against HIV.

In the meantime, the group seems optimistic about the endeavor, remaining hopeful that this grant will allow them to understand better how the immune system functions as well as maintaining the goal of building more accurate mathematical and experimental models to be used to help predict which cellular factors represent various targets for different antiviral therapies.

This is just one prime example of how using grant funds properly can actually make a difference in the world, one step at a time.

(Via: FierceBiotech)