Project Grant R21AI191085

This federal Project Grant award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (CFDA 93.855 - Allergy and Infectious Diseases Research) provides $286,791 to Childrens Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati, Ohio to develop and apply pediatric-specific blood transcriptional modules (PBTMs) across diverse geographical settings through public data mining. The goal is to establish a comprehensive resource of PBTMs that capture the heterogeneous physiological states of children aged birth to 12 years, informing pediatric immunology research and the development of vaccines and therapies to improve childhood health outcomes. The award supports the construction of PBTMs utilizing transcriptome data from over 13,000 samples across 76 studies, with an assessment framework leveraging pediatric single-cell datasets and genome-wide association studies. The resulting state-of-the-art computational pipeline will be made publicly available to enable replication in other disease and tissue settings, demonstrating the utility of PBTMs to define immunological differences across geographically disparate pediatric populations.