2021 Russo Family Awards

The Russo Family Award has been made possible by a generous endowed gift from the Russo Family Charitable Foundation to Tufts University School of Medicine (TUSM). The award provides funding for new collaborative projects from faculty at TUSM. This year’s awardees and their projects are:

Elizabeth Byrnes, Fair Vassoler and Elizabeth Yen
Revealing neural mechanisms underlying neonatal opioid-induced hyperphagia
The goal of this project is to reverse translate insights derived from studying translational modifications in the saliva of newborns exposed to opioids to develop a rodent model of exposure that will allow the investigators to understand the neural mechanisms underlying this unique feeding phenotype.

Joan Mecsas and Bree Aldridge
Developing rational treatment strategies for antibiotic-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae
The goal of this project is to identify conditions for testing the response of antibiotic resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae to combinations of drugs that will accurately predict in vivo responses.

Shruti Sharma and Marta Rodriguez-Garcia
Mapping Genital Inflammation in Women with Novel Single-Cell Approaches
The goal of this project is to use high resolution single cell transcriptomics and cell surface marker analysis to compare human and mouse genital tract inflammatory states.