Ellen Wald, MD, professor, Division of Infectious Diseases, has been awarded a $3,745,763 grant for the project, “Identifying the burden of hospitalization due to Rhinovirus (RV) in children and mechanisms of pathogenesis using airway molecular profiling,” from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to establish the burden of rhinoviruses (RVs) as a cause of acute, severe, respiratory illnesses leading to hospitalization in children. Co-investigators on this project include Gregory DeMuri, MD, professor, Division of Infectious Diseases, and James (Jim) Gern, MD, professor, vice chair of research, Division of Allergy, Immunology, and Rheumatology. Jens Eickhoff, distinguished scientist III, Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, works as the biostatistician on this project. The specific aims in this proposal are to identify RV types in children and develop a host transcriptomic signature that discriminates RV-related illnesses from both subclinical RV infection and infection with another respiratory virus family; compare RV types in hospitalized and ambulatory children and define the value of nasal transcriptomics in improving diagnostic accuracy for distinguishing active forms of RV infection; and to use parallel bulk and single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to identify targetable processes of acute, severe LRT caused by RV. The funding for this grant began in August of this year and will end in July 2030.