From early in Dr. Lin Liu’s career, he wanted to build a research center to study diseases of the respiratory system. The seed was planted as he studied these diseases as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1990s. When he came to Oklahoma State University in 2010, he said he wasn’t ready for the challenge of launching a research center. Three years later, the seed blossomed into the Oklahoma Center for Respiratory and Infectious Diseases (OCRID). The course of his career, and dozens of other scientists, was set.
When OCRID opened its doors on the OSU campus with $11 million in federal funding in 2013, it was a thrilling moment for Lui, the center’s director. But the pressure was on to show that this first phase of funding by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was worth it — and it has been. “Phase 1 has been transformative to the landscape of respiratory and infectious disease research in Oklahoma,” Liu said this summer after learning that OCRID was awarded a Phase 2 grant to continue its research until at least 2023. NIH awarded $11.1 million to the center to continue the work of more than 60 scientists from three research institutions in the state, including OSU. As it did five years ago, the funding comes from the NIH Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (CoBRE) program, which supports expanding biomedical research throughout the country by universities and institutions that recruit and train scientists, develop core research facilities and carry out cutting-edge investigations. The goal is to better understand countless destructive diseases and develop vaccines and drug treatments to prevent infection, limit transmission, treat lung damage and avert related infections. In Oklahoma, OCRID scientists are leading pioneering research into a multitude of diseases that sicken millions. Infectious respiratory diseases are a worldwide public health epidemic. These diseases run the gamut from the common cold and strep to life-threatening infections such as tuberculosis, influenza, pneumonia (the leading worldwide cause of the death of children under 5), human respiratory syncytial virus (HRSV), infections that aggravate such disorders as cystic fibrosis and many other illnesses. Most of these illnesses have no vaccines or treatments.
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