UMass Dartmouth professor receives $464K grant

DARTMOUTH – University of Massachusetts Dartmouth professor Dr. Vanni Bucci received a $464,739 grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease to create new mathematical models to improve treatment of intestine diseases.
The research goal is to predict how intestinal bacteria cause the disease, and how predicted changes through antibiotics affect disease treatment in hospitalized patients.
“Diseases of this kind represent a critical issue in today’s healthcare system. Current treatment strategies not only don’t account for the natural protective mechanisms against the disease, but can also end up harming a patient more,” Bucci said in a statement. “By developing and validating predictive mathematical models that account for the effect of these therapies on the intestinal bacteria and how consequent changes in the intestinal bacteria affect health and disease, we will be able to design smarter and targeted antibiotic and probiotic therapies.”
Bucci and collaborators will use new DNA predictive models to will allow them to identify specific states and properties of patients’ diseases and what therapies are being targeted toward their treatment. They will also use these models as simulators to computationally test what therapies may lead to disease remission. Based on these results, the team will prototype new probiotic cocktails tailored at curing these infections.
“I feel fortunate and look forward to continue working with my fellow collaborators at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center to provide more scientific backing to improve care and provide new insight into the cause of these diseases,” he said.
This work also creates an opportunity to improve preventative medicine strategies for these kinds of diseases. Researchers hope to identify more ways to prevent disease causes from being established.
Bucci is a faculty member of UMass Dartmouth’s Center for Scientific Computing and Visualization Research.

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