Florian Douam, PhD, Jessica L. Fetterman, PhD, Receive Smith Family Foundation’s Odyssey Award

Two junior faculty members have been awarded Smith Family Foundation’s Odyssey Awards. Florian Douam, PhD, assistant professor of virology, immunology, and microbiology, and a core faculty member at Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL), and Jessica L. Fetterman, PhD, FAHA, assistant professor of medicine, will each receive two-year, $400,000 grants to pursue pilot projects in their respective fields. Created in 2017 to fuel creativity and innovation in junior investigators in the basic sciences, the Odyssey Award supports the pursuit of high impact ideas to generate breakthroughs and drive new directions in biomedical research.

Transmitted through the bites of infected arthropods such as mosquitos, arboviruses including dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya, and Zika, are a significant public health concern for an estimated 4 billion people worldwide. No treatments are available against any of these pathogens. Following a bite, different skin cells respond uniquely to salivary products allowing the virus to shape the progression and clinical outcome of the viral infection. These processes, however, remain poorly defined.

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Florian Douam

Douam is a viral immunologist studying flaviviruses and coronaviruses. By developing humanized experimental models, his research identifies and characterizes human immune mechanisms that govern the virulence of these viruses.

“Efforts to develop effective countermeasures to arbovirus infection have been impeded by the lack of suitable experimental models that can closely mimic the human cutaneous response to a bite from an infected arthropod,” says Douam.

His project will develop a new experimental model co-engrafted with human skin tissue and a human immune system. Using mosquitoes infected with Zika virus, Douam’s research will unravel critical skin mechanisms that promote Zika transmission from the mosquito to the human skin, and subsequent dissemination into the organism. His research will enhance our understanding of arbovirus transmission and pave the way for the development of innovative preventative strategies against diseases caused by arboviruses.

Over the past three years, Douam has also made significant contributions to our understanding of COVID-19, notably through the development of innovative experimental models to study the disease. More recently, in collaboration with colleagues at the BU College of Engineering, he co-developed a novel COVID-19 vaccine platform effective at ultra-low doses. Douam has been awarded multiple awards for his work, including a NIH K22 transition award and a Peter Paul Career Development Professorship award. He was also recently awarded a 2024 Rajen Kilachand Fund for Integrated Life Sciences & Engineering award.

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Jessica Fetterman

Fetterman is a basic and translational scientist studying the intersections of mitochondrial physiology, mitochondrial genetic epidemiology and cardiovascular disease. Her work focuses on the contribution of mitochondrial genetic variation, and abnormalities, to cardiovascular disease in the presence of risk factors such as tobacco product use and diabetes.

Defects in mitochondrial genes result in a spectrum of diseases in humans, ranging from severe pediatric syndromes to common aging-related diseases, typically involving the heart and brain. Mitochondrial diseases are diagnosed in an estimated 1 in 4,300 individuals in the U.S. Currently, no therapies are approved for the treatment or cure of these conditions.

“Our understanding of the genetics and mechanisms of mitochondrial diseases is hindered by the absence of experimental models of human mitochondrial genetics; the inability to manipulate the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA); and limited access to clinically relevant tissues, including those of the heart and brain,” explains Fetterman.

The award will fund her research into developing, optimizing, and validating an innovative approach for transporting guide RNA (gRNA) into mitochondria to facilitate CRISPR-Cas9 deaminase gene editing correction of pathogenic mtDNA variants in patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).

Recently, Fetterman was awarded the competitive Trans-Omics Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Analytical Support Award for early career investigators to perform comprehensive bioinformatic annotation of the mitochondrial genetic variants within the TOPMed cohorts.

Fetterman also conducts research on the impact of new and emerging tobacco products on the vasculature, particularly studies designed to inform tobacco product regulation. Some of her recent work demonstrated that tobacco product flavoring additives induce vascular endothelial dysfunction, an early indicator of cardiovascular injury. She serves as an associate director of education and training within the American Heart Association Tobacco Regulation and Addiction Center. Additionally, she is the director for the Boston University Tobacco Regulatory Science Affinity Research Collaborative, which is designed to bring together multi-disciplinary teams of scientists within Boston University to increase our understanding of tobacco product use patterns and the impact of new and emerging tobacco products on human health and disease.

The Smith Family Foundation is committed to effecting permanent positive change in the lives of the residents of Greater Boston, particularly individuals and families in economically disadvantaged communities. In the area of health, the Foundation supports the advancement of biomedical research and the expansion of access to high-quality health care at safety net institutions serving low-income individuals and communities of Greater Boston. Financial support comes from the Richard and Susan Smith Family Foundation.