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About the PRCs

Caprion Proteomics Inc. (Caprion)

Biodefense Proteomics Research Center at Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Einstein)

The Harvard Institute of Proteomics (HIP)

Myriad Genetics, Inc. (Myriad)

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)

The Scripps Research Institute - FSPS (FSPS)

The University of Michigan (U-M)

About the University of Michigan
Drs. Nicholas Bergman and Philip C. Hanna, PIs

The University of Michigan is a global leader known for advancing all aspects of life: health, law and public policy, the arts and humanities, science and engineering. Students and faculty have the opportunity to achieve more at the University of Michigan than anywhere else.

Anthrax is a serious, often fatal disease that has been recently brought to public attention because of its use in bioterrorism and noted presence in several nations' biowarfare arsenals. The disease is caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis, which enters the body as dormant endospores, then uses host macrophages as a sanctuary in which to germinate, begin replication, and produce toxins. Current therapy and vaccine options are suboptimal, and a better understanding of B. anthracis biology-particularly how the bacterium interacts with the host macrophage to establish infection-is essential for the development of new options.

Our overall objectives in this research are to use global proteomics- and genomics-based approaches to document the gene expression patterns during all phases of the B. anthracis lifecycle, with a particular focus on its germination and growth inside host macrophages. We will identify proteins that are essential for its growth and pathogenesis, as well as those that are specifically important for its interaction with the macrophage. We will also identify macrophage genes that are important for this interaction, and in doing so define this relationship in molecular terms from both sides. The roles of specific genes on either side will be assessed by mutagenesis and RNAi-mediated silencing. We expect that this work will result in the identification and initial characterization of a large number of potential targets that might be exploited in the development of future therapeutic and vaccine options.

See the Biodefense Proteomics Catalog for the University of Michigan's publicly available proteomic data.