Hannah Itell, PhD, whose research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center is focused on finding ways to prevent viral infections that can cause severe disease, is one of 29 postdoctoral fellows honored this year by the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research.
Each year the JCC Fund, based in New Haven, Connecticut, awards three years of salary support to 25-30 of the “best and brightest” postdoctoral fellows to pursue “fundamental biomedical research to advance human health.”
Since it was established in 1937, the fund has supported more than 1,700 fellows to conduct basic cancer and human disease-related research in laboratories in North America, Europe, Japan and Australia.
“Our experience has demonstrated that support from the JCC Fund will catalyze the careers of our fellows and lead to major scientific breakthroughs,” Sue Biggins, PhD, chair of the JCC Fund’s Board of Scientific Advisors, said in a news release.
Itell, a member of the laboratory of Ivelin Georgiev, PhD, professor of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, is 1 of 3 VUMC postdoctoral researchers who have received JCC Fellowships.
Christopher Lopez, PhD, a 2017 JCC-Simons Foundation Fellow, is now an assistant professor of Microbiology/Food Microbiology at California State University in Sacramento. Among other projects, he is investigating how the gut microbiota adapts to environmental changes.
Martin Douglass, PhD, a 2023 JCC Fellow mentored by Eric Skaar, PhD, MPH, Ernest W. Goodpasture Professor of Pathology, later was named a Hanna Gray Fellow by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He studies Clostridioides difficile, a bacterium that causes diarrhea and inflammation of the colon (colitis).
According to the JCC Fund, Itell’s global health research in India, South Africa and Brazil while an undergraduate at Davidson College in North Carolina inspired her to dedicate her career to finding ways to prevent the spread of viral infections.
For her PhD in molecular and cellular biology, awarded in 2023 by the University of Washington in Seattle, she conducted research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center that has advanced understanding of the host response to infection by HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS.
At VUMC, she is investigating the Oropouche virus, which can cause fever, headache, joint pain, muscle pain, chills, nausea, vomiting and rash. Transmitted by insect bites, Oropouche virus disease was limited to the Amazon rainforest but since 2023 has spread throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
Currently no vaccines or specific treatments are available to prevent or treat Oropouche infection, which can cause severe illness. Itell’s research on the host response to infection and virus-antibody interactions will inform rational vaccine design and development of antibody therapies.
The JCC Fund was established by the Childs Family to honor the memory of Jane Coffin Childs, who died of cancer in 1936. For more information, visit www.jccfund.org.
