Perdita Permaul, MD has been awarded an NIH/NIAID funded subcontract with the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, currently operated by Leidos Biomedical Research, Inc., 3-year pilot multicenter study to demonstrate the utility of immunologic and epidemiologic surveillance for future emerging pathogens and drive the development of future diagnostic, therapeutic, and preventative tools.
The project, known as “Pandemic Response Repository through Microbial and Immune Surveillance and Epidemiology (PREMISE): Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) Pilot Study,” will be led at Weill Cornell by Dr. Permaul, with co-investigators Drs. Sallie Permar and Stefan Worgall, to study enterovirus (EV) D68, a contagious respiratory infection that mostly affects children and has been associated with acute flaccid myelitis cases, and for which there is no vaccine. The study will allow researchers to learn more about the pathogen and how a child responds and fights off infection.
The EV-D68 pilot study will enroll participants 10 years old or younger to create a biorepository of blood and nasal specimens pre- and post- EV-D68 seasons, which occurs in late summer and fall. Researchers will perform immunologic assessments of the participant’s response to EV-D68, among other viruses, to help drive the development of future diagnostic, therapeutic, and preventative tools and improve the understanding of the epidemiology of EV-D68.
The study will also be used to help assess the utility and feasibility of PREMISE to conduct immunologic surveillance in a pathogen-agnostic manner for emerging pathogens of pandemic potential.