Sarah Ewald, PhD
Sarah Ewald, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Cancer Biology, was awarded a five-year $2.3 million R35 grant renewal from the NIH National Institute of General Medical Sciences. The grant will support Dr. Ewald’s research related to innate inflammatory control of cachexia.
Inflammation is necessary to control infection, however, unresolved inflammation can lead to chronic disease. With support from the NIH-R35 award, the Ewald lab is identifying inflammatory pathways driving chronic disease progression that can be inhibited without increasing susceptibility to pathogen infection. To do this, the Ewald Lab studies infection with parasites that cause the metabolic wasting disease known as cachexia.
Cachexia is the leading predictor of mortality in chronic diseases that account for 80% of annual deaths in the United States, including cancer, cardiac disease, and neurodegenerative diseases. Parasites have co-evolved with humans for millions of years, developing strategies to avoid immune detection without killing their host. Studying how parasites achieve this has led the team to discover a surprising source of chronic inflammation in cachexia: the gut commensal microbiota. A major problem with current inflammation-blocking therapies is that they leave patients susceptible to secondary infection. Targeting gut bacteria may be a safer and more effective method to reverse the progression of this deadly and pervasive disease.
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