# K24: Midcareer Investigator Award: Urban School Allergen Exposure and Childhood Asthma

> **NIH NIH K24** · BOSTON CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL · 2020 · $189,266

## Abstract

Project Summary / Abstract
Childhood asthma, particularly in urban environments, is a source of significant morbidity. Children spend the
majority of their day in school. The immediate goal of this project is to determine the role of changes in school-
specific environmental exposures and molecular biomarkers and asthma morbidity. The Candidate/PI is a
physician scientist with expertise in patient oriented research and runs a fully NIH funded asthma/allergy
clinical research center. Since this K-24 was awarded 4 years ago she has been extremely successful in
mentoring by supporting 5 funded K-23 awards and expanding her program with her role as PI on 2 new U01s
and 1 R01 with multiple other NIH funded clinical collaborations. This renewal is critical to maintaining this
level of productivity and mentoring of the next generation of patient-oriented researchers. Her environment
includes unparalleled community relationships, infrastructure, resources, and collaborators. Career
Development Goals are to ensure that the candidate will be provided sufficient time for mentoring and patient
oriented clinical research activities. The award will also allow her to further her education in statistical methods,
study design, molecular biology, phenotype and endotype driven biomarker precision medicine, and
environment interactions to help her expand her patient oriented research program. This will allow us to move
towards our overall goal of further our understanding of molecular underpinnings in predicting treatment
response and disease pathophysiology, which will allow her to develop and design interventions to reduce the
severity and incidence of childhood asthma. The research hypothesis is that changes in classroom/school
specific allergen/pollution levels will be associated with molecular extracellular vesicle (EV) changes and
asthma morbidity. We will use a two stage validation approach to compare number, size, and miRNA cargo
in saliva are associated with classroom levels of allergens and particulate pollutants and modified by the NIAID
SICAS-2 school/classroom based environmental intervention and asthma health outcomes and compare
them with data archived from SICAS-1 (our NIAID observational cohort). We will also compare these
results in a subset of age/gender matched students without asthma as controls (the NHLBI funded EASY
cohort) attending the same classrooms to further the interpretation of our findings utilizing state of the art
techniques. The impact of this research may result in novel biomarkers that could inform us about the
efficacy of school-based interventions against environmental exposures important to childhood asthma and
its immune modulation, addressing a critical public health problem.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9920076
- **Project number:** 5K24AI106822-08
- **Recipient organization:** BOSTON CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL
- **Principal Investigator:** WANDA PHIPATANAKUL
- **Activity code:** K24 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $189,266
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2013-06-01 → 2023-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9920076

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9920076, K24: Midcareer Investigator Award: Urban School Allergen Exposure and Childhood Asthma (5K24AI106822-08). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9920076. Licensed CC0.

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