Prof. Prida Malasit, Director of Medical Biotechnology Research Laboratory, a joint laboratory between BIOTEC and Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University, was awarded the 2015 NSTDA Research Chair Grant to work on "Integrative researches for a set of novel biomarkers applicable to diagnosis, prognosis and treatments of patients with dengue hemorrhagic fever".
Dengue hemorrhagic fever and dengue shock syndrome are severe forms of dengue virus infection and are still one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in children of school age in tropical and subtropical regions. The ability to distinguish severe dengue from mild dengue fever is crucial as the former requires timely and intensive care to save the patients’ lives. Prof. Prida will lead a competent team of researchers from Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital and BIOTEC, to explore the complex mechanism of dengue virus infection to uncover biomarkers associated with the infection severity which can then be applied to the development of novel predictive diagnostics and better guidelines of clinical care and public health intervention.
Another Grant was presented to Prof. Dr. Somsak Panyakeow from the Department of Engineering, Chulalongkorn University to study on the Antimony-based Quantum Nanostructures for the Development of Infrared Detectors.
NSTDA Research Chair Grants are awarded annually to outstanding senior scientists who have demonstrated a sustained high level of productivity to enable them to conduct a large-scale research project and provide mentoring of new investigators. Each grant is worth up to 20 million Baht for a five-year period.