UNLV molecular virologist Marcella McClure has received two grants totaling nearly $1.4 million dollars from the National Institutes of Health to support her research involving viruses.

McClure studies viruses to try to determine their gene functions and how they will change over time. All her work is done on the computer.

One grant, totaling slightly more than $1 million is intended to support her research over a five-year period. It will pay for a variety of costs associated with her research, including equipment. It also will allow her to hire a computer programmer, a post-doctoral fellow, a graduate student, and several undergraduate students to help with her research. These jobs will afford UNLV undergraduate students a unique research opportunity.

A second grant, called a Research Career Development Award, will total approximately $365,000 over a five-year period. It will pay for 83 percent of her university salary, plus benefits, allowing the university to hire another highly qualified instructor to teach most of her classes so that she can concentrate on her research.

The funding for both grants comes from the Allergy and Infectious Disease Institute, one of the National Institutes of Health.

"I am pleased with this show of support from the National Institutes of Health and excited about what this funding will mean to my research," McClure said. "This will allow me to devote so much more time to my research than would have been possible otherwise."

Warren Burggren, interim dean of UNLV's College of Science and Mathematics, said that obtaining a Career Development Award from NIH is an impressive feat.

"It is an extremely prestigious award for any university, and it is certainly a first for UNLV," Burggren said. "To get, in addition, an operating grant from NIH concurrently is a truly wonderful achievement."

McClure will be studying RNA (ribonucleic acid) viruses such as measles, mumps, ebola, and HIV to try to determine how they will change over time. She also works on identification of protein function in the newly determined genes from RNA viruses.

Because RNA viruses mutate so rapidly, it is difficult for scientists to develop effective anti-viral agents to kill the viruses, McClure said.

But if scientists could find a way to predict how a virus will mutate, that would allow pharmaceutical chemists to get ahead of the curve in developing anti-viral agents, she said. That way, when a virus mutated, scientists would be ready with an effective anti-viral agent to combat the new strain, she said.

McClure, an assistant professor of biological sciences, has been at UNLV since 1993. She earned her doctoral degree in molecular biology from Washington University School of Medicine.

For additional information on her research, call McClure at 895-4471.