Last week, the Duke University School of Medicine received a $1.25 million federal grant from the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases to aid in the classification of infectious diseases.
The four-year grant will go toward the creation of the Infectious Diseases Ontology, specifically for Staphylococcus aureus, one of the most common staph infections, said Lindsay Cowell, assistant professor of biostatistics and bioinformatics at DUMC and the researcher in charge of the grant.
"We're very happy about [the grant]," she said. "Funding is hard to come by these days, and in particular, funding for ontology projects is hard to come by."
Ontology is the science of the classifications and relationships between things. The field helps scientists and researchers forge common frameworks and better understand each other. The creation of an Infectious Diseases Ontology will make it easier for scientists to share information regarding those diseases, according to a Jan. 14 news release from The State University of New York at Buffalo.
DUMC researchers will also use the Staphylococcus aureus ontology and previously collected data to predict disease-susceptible genes and then test the genes experimentally, Cowell said.
She added that although the field of ontology has existed for a long time, it has only recently become prominent in the field of biomedicine for its capacity to manage large computerized data sets, which will be used extensively in the upcoming research.
In addition to funding from NIAID, DUMC received $70,000 from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, a private Triangle-based organization that supports biomedical research. DUMC will also be working with the researchers from the National Center for Ontological Research at SUNY-Buffalo, which will receive $250,000 of the funding.
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