LSU Health Shreveport is one of four universities to be awarded a grant to study gene sequencing from the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation. Director for Emerging Viral Threats at LSUHS Dr. Andrew Yurochko said the school’s role in the pandemic is why they have received the honor.
“We did this to help the citizens and to serve as the public health and surveillance and in the end by doing that we were recognized by what we have done,” said Yurochko.
Yurochko said sequencing in layman’s terms is discovering the fingerprint for a virus, or any other disease, and it is that fingerprint in which they are able to detect new variants and provide a code of what vaccine creators use as a roadmap.
“And they can then take that code and say we think these are the parts that are going to help us make a vaccine, so in that scenario, it’s essential to be able to make that vaccine,” said Yurochko.
The objective of the grant is to strengthen global capabilities to detect and respond to pandemic threats in the future. Yurochko said the award is indicative of LSU Health Shreveport’s strides in detecting variants and assisting with vaccine rollout.
“I think this recognition we’ve got is that we’re at a small school in the south and yet we’ve done every bit as good as the top universities in the company,” said Yurochko.
Harvard and MIT also received Rockefeller grants.
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