Grant-winning scientist works on PCR testing of asthma

Russia’s Innovation Support Foundation (FASIE) disburses funds to young scientists.

The competition has six subject areas:

digital technology;

medicine and healthcare technology;

new materials and chemical technology;

new devices and intelligent manufacturing;

biotechnology;

resource-saving energy studies.

In the new devices and intelligent manufacturing category, a grant of 500,000 rubles went to Junior Research Associate Bulat Ibragimov (Department of Biochemistry, Biotechnology and Pharmacology). His research is dedicated to PCR testing for LC3-associated phagocytosis to detect asthma.

“As a rule, asthma is diagnosed by waiting for the stage of exacerbation of the disease, when pronounced morphologic symptoms are manifested. Late diagnosis reduces the effectiveness and efficiency of treatment. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop a method of more reliable diagnosis of asthma at early stages, which is the focus of my project,” comments the grantee.

The project proposes diagnosis based on analyzing changes in the body’s molecular immune mechanisms. Such diagnosis, as the scientist says, was previously impossible due to the lack of knowledge of the mechanisms of LC3-associated phagocytosis – one of the types of programmed cell death, which is studied by the Laboratory of Immune Pathology.

An intellectual property will be created as part of the future development of the technology, and later a medical testing unit for clinical use.

Another representative of the Institute of Fundamental Medicine and Biology was among the winners. Sixth-year student Chulpan Kharisova submitted her project Development of specialized therapy of non-healing wounds after radiotherapy based on plasma scaffold enriched with thrombocytes.