Purmessur granted R21 award from the National Institutes of Health
We are pleased to announce that Devina Purmessur, assistant professor, BME has received a National Institutes of Health R21 award! This is a two year award beginning on August 7 , 2020 - July 31, 2020, in the amount of $377,520.
This grant will support her translational research programs that investigate the role of innate immunity on the development of chronic back pain. Purmessur has assembled an outstanding and highly multi-disciplinary team from the investigators including Biomedical Engineering (College of Engineering), Veterinary Medicine and Neuroscience (College of Medicine) for this project.
Title: Immune-modulation in canine models of painful intervertebral disc degeneration
Funding agency: NIH/NIAMS – R21
Team:
PI: Devina Purmessur, PhD
Collaborators: College of Veterinary Medicine: Sarah Moore DVM, Joelle Fenger DVM & Kara Corps DVM. College of Medicine: Candice Askwith PhD, Brett Klamer & Safdar Khan MD
Summary: The underlying causes of low back pain are an enigma despite the huge socio-economic burden of this debilitating disorder, with current surgical interventions proving ineffective and highly invasive. This proposal uses a multi-disciplinary approach to examine a novel role for innate immune cell, the mast cell and down-stream Protease-activated receptor 2 pathway in chronic low back pain using clinically relevant in vitro and in vivo chondrodystrophic canine models that will ultimately lead to clinical trials in canine and human patients. Immune modulation is a novel concept for the treatment of painful disc degeneration and there is a critical need to establish clinically relevant animal models with pain behaviors and structural changes that best recapitulate the human condition to improve human health and quality of life.