Congratulations to Bruce Klein, MD, on his recent R21 award of $420,750 from the National Institutes of Health – National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIH-NIAID). His two-year project, “Molecular pathogenesis and Blastomyces adherence,” tackles significant unmet needs of developing better ways to treat and prevent systemic fungal infections by investigating a basic mechanism of pathogenicity – binding host tissue – in a human fungal pathogen. As invasive fungal infections are now one of the 10 leading causes of death (7th), ahead of mortality due to tuberculosis, the new basic knowledge gleaned from this study can be harnessed for better fungal disease prevention and treatment.