Systems Biology of Drug-Resistant Infectious Diseases

Purpose

MTEC is excited to post this announcement for a Request for Project Information (RPI) focused on the use of systems biology approaches to: i) better understand drug-resistant infectious diseases at their molecular, cellular, and systems levels, and ii) identify new potential products and develop them into prototypes for the diagnosis and treatment of these diseases. MTEC’s systems biology initiative is focused on utilizing an integrative, rather than reductionist, approach to understand how biological systems function and interact as a whole.

The goal of this initiative is to design an integrated and collaborative research and prototype development portfolio leveraging known or emerging knowledge of the regulatory processes of resistance mechanisms, with the purpose of integrated validation and prototype development with follow-on translation into clinical use. This RPI contains background material and guidance for the preparation of project information paper submissions to MTEC.

Scope of Work

MTEC is convening a panel of experts to review the recommendations of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC) recent State of the Science meeting, Systems Biology of Infectious Disease, held for the purpose of identifying relevant pathways of infectious disease resistance in order to better understand those associated with both resistance and its regulatory processes at the molecular level. The panel will develop the research components of a unified plan that identifies known and potentially discoverable processes that regulate bacterial mechanisms of resistance, which, as a whole, constitute the likely lion’s share of resistance characteristics in bacteria. The research program will emphasize the underlying molecular foundations that sustain these mechanisms of resistance and their associated biomarkers in order to identify nullifying strategies and countermeasures. The panel’s “deliverable” will yield a flexible execution plan that consists of an integrated portfolio of individual activities to be performed by either consortium members or associated academic or other competent collaborators enlisted.

Points of Contact

For inquiries, please direct your correspondence to Biomedical Research Associate Chuck Hutti, Ph.D. at Chuck.Hutti@ati.org.