Daniel Jackson, MD, was awarded $74,878 from the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIH-NIAID) for his project entitled, “Mechanisms of Enhanced Enterovirus (EV) D68 Pathogenicity.” EV D68 has emerged as an important respiratory pathogen in children, with an outbreak of severe illnesses in the United States in 2014. In this project, awarded as part of the NIAID U19 Opportunity Fund, investigators will clone one of the current circulating strains of EV D68, along with strains from previous years, then perform studies in differentiated airway epithelial cells and peripheral blood mononuclear cells to compare the immune response elicited by the different strains of EV D68 along with rhinovirus species A, B, and C. Then, investigators will assess whether altered receptor specificity, temperature sensitivity, or other characteristics may help explain the enhanced severity of EV D68 illnesses that occurred in the United States in 2014.