Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill received a $553,779 Project Grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) under the Allergy and Infectious Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.855), awarded February 4, 2026, with completion targeted for January 31, 2031. The research project investigates translation regulation during human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection, specifically examining how infected cells modify their protein synthesis machinery to support viral replication while managing host antiviral responses. Using proteomics approaches, the research identifies changes in the composition of translation machinery caused by infection and explores novel roles for alternative host and potentially viral factors that temporally regulate viral messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) translation during different infection stages.

The grant supports fundamental virology research aimed at understanding the mechanistic relationship between HCMV infection and cellular translation efficiency. Rather than confirming the prevailing hypothesis that infection causes non-specific increases in overall translation, preliminary data suggest infection produces diverse outcomes across different mRNA populations, with some cellular mRNAs showing increased translation efficiency while others remain unaffected or demonstrate temporal changes. This research contributes to the broader NIAID mission of advancing biomedical knowledge of infectious diseases and may inform future therapeutic interventions targeting viral protein synthesis pathways.