UNC Charlotte researcher earns NIH grant for autoimmune disease study

UNC CHARLOTTE

UNC Charlotte researcher Danillo Augusto Ph.D. (center) and his team earned a $3.7 million federal grant to study autoimmune responses to disease in humans by examining portions of the human genome.

UNC Charlotte researcher Danillo Augsuto Ph.D. has dedicated his career to autoimmune research.

Augusto was recently awarded a $3.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for an immunomics project using new methodology and approaches to study human immune responses and autoimmune disease. 

“The disease I am working on with this grant is called pemphigus foliaceus,” Augusto said. “It is an autoimmune disease of the skin that will cause people to have blisters and rashes that are very painful.”

Augusto and his team are using what he called a novel method by using long-read sequencing technology, a first of its kind in how it examines complex portions of the human genome. They’ll also study how it reacts with pathogens, eliciting autoimmune responses.

While there are a vast number of autoimmune diseases, Augusto says he hopes to make observations about how such diseases start, how they attack the body and similarities to how the blood cells in these individuals work, or don’t. 

“The genomic region that we are studying is like a hot spot for disease association,” he said. “In this very large region, there are approximately 170 genes and about 50% of them are directly related to the immune system. The research could have a large impact on how we understand human immune response and multiple diseases.” 

The type of research Augusto and his team are conducting is called immunomics, or study of how genes affect how the body responds to different pathogens. With this type of research comes a high cost. Augusto said the grant will go a long way in helping further his research. 

“The main cost of the research comes from personnel,” Augusto said. “I have one assistant research professor and two post-doctoral researchers working on that grant [money]. Their salaries will be covered by that grant, but this is also very expensive from the research standpoint itself. Lab materials and some of the experiments themselves can cost a lot of money, especially when we are using research tools that are extremely advanced. We do a lot of DNA sequencing and analysis of specific single cells. This is very expensive. So, those are the main costs that the grant will cover.”

Augusto, who has conducted autoimmune research for 20 years, has reported findings that can be beneficial to physicians that treat autoimmune disease. 

“We found, for example, that there’s receptors in some blood cells called natural killer cells, and those natural killer cells are specialized in killing abnormal cells,” he said. “So, we identified some of those receptors and these cells, they’re highly protective against pemphigus.”

Augusto said two other autoimmune diseases that have similarities with pemphigus are lupus and dermatitis. Often the cells work in the same way with these types of diseases, so while they aren’t the same, understanding one disease can help understand others. 

“I think my ultimate goal is to actually identify specific markers that are candid for specific [gene] therapy,” Augusto said. “I’m not a physician, but at least we want to find what could be used for better therapy for this disease. The other thing is being able to identify if there is an environmental factor. We know there is something in the environment that triggered the disease, but we want to know what. Is it a virus? Is it a pathogenic virus or non-pathogenic virus? So, understanding that could also be ways we can help prevention.”

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