Federal Grant Award Summary

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) awarded the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill a Project Grant of $427,625 under the Allergy and Infectious Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.855) effective April 17, 2026, with a completion date of March 31, 2028. The award supports research focused on developing novel phage-mediated therapeutic approaches to reprogram the gut microbiome for treating inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The research team will engineer specialized non-replicative phage vectors (SCNRPV) capable of delivering therapeutic phagemids that reprogram existing gut bacterial consortia to secrete nanobody-formatted inhibitors targeting tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and interleukin-23 (IL-23), key inflammatory cytokines implicated in chronic IBD pathogenesis. This targeted approach addresses critical limitations of current microbiome-based therapies by enabling precise genetic control over specific bacterial populations while minimizing off-target effects on non-targeted resident microbiota.

The research aims to establish an alternative to conventional microbiome intervention strategies such as probiotics, prebiotics, and fecal microbiota transplantation by leveraging bacteriophages as biological vectors for in situ genetic reprogramming of the intestinal microbial community. Initial project objectives include engineering a P1-based SCNRPV platform and corresponding therapeutic phagemid delivery systems encoding for secretion of nanobodies against TNF and IL-23p19 in murine experimental colitis models. The funding supports basic and translational research activities to evaluate the efficacy and safety of this innovative phage-mediated immunomodulation strategy for suppressing chronic inflammation in IBD.