Foundation receives $3.1M grant for sepsis research

The National Institutes of Health has awarded the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation a five-year, $3.1 million grant for research aimed at reducing the main cause of death from infection.

OMRF scientist Florea Lupu, Ph.D., said he hopes his research leads to a new therapeutic treatment for sepsis, which kills about 270,000 people per year in the United States – more than lung cancer, breast cancer and drug overdoses combined.

“We are targeting a specific part of the immune system called the ‘complement system,’ which helps clear away bacteria in early sepsis but then becomes detrimental and contributes to organ failure,” Lupu said in a Feb. 22 news release.