A $56 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases will establish an Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) Center for Pathogens of Pandemic Concern at the University of Texas Medical Branch. The center, a partnership between UTMB and global health care company Novartis, will focus on coronaviruses, flavivirus and henipavirus, three major classes of viruses with pandemic potential.

Abnormal tumor blood vessels promote cancer progression and treatment resistance. Researchers have developed two approaches to repair tumor blood vessels and they have devised a method to measure the effects of these approaches. Combining the approaches may be an effective strategy for fixing blood vessel abnormalities that make tumors difficult to treat.

Researchers at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center for Innovation in Brain Science were awarded a $2.7 million MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging to continue work on the impact of estrogen as a master regulator of the brain’s bioenergetic system, which promotes glucose transport and metabolism and energy generation.