# Systems Biology and Biostatistics Core

> **NIH NIH U19** · UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BALTIMORE · 2024 · $216,589

## Abstract

CORE 2 SUMMARY
The overall goal of the Systems Biology and Biostatistics Core is to provide service to advance the knowledge
of systemic and gut human immunity in children and adults, by furnishing systems biology, bioinformatics, and
biostatistics expertise to strengthen, support, and augment the research conducted in the Research Projects.
The Systems Biology and Biostatistics Core aims to deliver expertise and service to perform integrative network
modeling of multiscale, multi-OMICs data to identify key drivers of disease severity and host response to
vaccination and infection. To reach this overall goal, the System Biology and Biostatistics Core will i) support the
Research Projects within the proposed Enteric CCHI by integrating the rich multi-OMICs, immunological, imaging
and clinical data generated within each project; ii) aid in validating the hypotheses generated in the Research
Projects to further our understanding of the protective immunological mechanisms of mucosal and systemic
immunity to vaccination and infection with enteric pathogens in children and adults; and iii) provide advanced
Biostatistics expertise. Such an endeavor requires state-of-the art integrative network approaches to construct,
analyze and validate multiscale networks of enteric bacterial infection and vaccination through integration of
large-scale molecular, cellular, and pathophysiological data in an unbiased manner. Our approaches will
incorporate these multi-dimensional data into mechanistic network models to predict outcomes of exposure to
wild-type and vaccine-strain bacteria and/or epigenetic immune modulators or adjuvants. Specifically, we will
develop and apply several novel differential analysis and multiscale network inference approaches to identify
molecular signatures, coexpression modules and causal relationships that will be further employed to discover
key regulators and pathways underlying vaccination and infection pertaining enteric pathogens. Such systems
approaches are completely data-driven and present global and unbiased maps of regulatory relationships
involving hundreds of thousands of interactions, with significantly improved power to uncover novel host-
pathogen pathways and driver genes. For this purpose, the Systems Biology and Biostatistics Core will deliver
the following: Aim 1, assembled large scale multi-omics datasets, identified molecular, clinical and
immunological signatures and integrated bulk and single-cell data, in particular cell-type information and B-cell
antibody repertoire; Aim 2, mechanistic molecular networks in response to vaccination and infection with enteric
pathogens; Aim 3, validated multiscale multi-Omics networks; and Aim 4, biostatistics expertise to help in the
development of optimal experimental designs. The Core’s leadership have demonstrated a strong track record
of employing systems biology and biostatistics approaches, ensuring the success of the proposed aims.
Therefore, we expect the service and expe...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10823667
- **Project number:** 1U19AI181108-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BALTIMORE
- **Principal Investigator:** CHRISTIAN FORST
- **Activity code:** U19 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $216,589
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-08-20 → 2029-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10823667

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10823667, Systems Biology and Biostatistics Core (1U19AI181108-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10823667. Licensed CC0.

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