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Conrad learned of the prestigious award in September and recalls whooping with joy, high fiving everyone nearby, and immediately texting family and friends a screenshot of his award notice.

“It’s a life-changing grant,” Conrad admitted. “It means I’ll be able to continue my research here at Lake Forest College.”

Conrad started studying TB in 2013 on a postdoctoral fellowship in microbiology and immunology at University of Washington, Seattle and continued his research in a second postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cambrige, England. He continues his research at Lake Forest College.

The NIH grant will fund Conrad’s study of the function of BrkB, an uncharacterized protein found in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes TB.

“I’ve been awarded this money basically to solve a problem in tuberculosis research, which is how does this protein of unknown function work? We think it’s important for the disease because if you get rid of this protein, the bacteria can’t grow in its host,” Conrad said. “We’re on the hunt to figure out what BrkB does so that we can potentially turn it into a drug target.” 

“It’s a great opportunity for the lab as a whole.” — Samuel Banuelos Barrios ’24

Conrad’s research lab students will tackle many of these questions.

“It’s a great opportunity for the lab as a whole,” said Samuel Banuelos Barrios ’24, a transfer from College of Lake County who served in the US Army for five-plus years.

Working in the TB lab, Barrios “made an important discovery setting us up for success,” Conrad said.

“Using the latest bioinformatic technology, including Googles AlphaFold structure prediction, I found a potential bacterial cell membrane building pathway that BrkB may be involved in that we will be able to test in the future,” Barrios explained. “It is the research lab’s goal to understand BrkB and its cellular function in bacteria to then design antibiotics to target it.”

Conrad has a collaborator at Northwestern University who's interested in studying the function of BrkB, his lab students conduct microscopy and mass spectrometry research at Rosalind Franklin University, and he has mentors at UW-Seattle and Duke University to support his funded research.

“The research we're doing stands on a really solid scientific foundation that was built by undergraduate researchers at Cambridge University and at Lake Forest College,” Conrad said. “I knew I had a good shot for this grant because of the student population here at Lake Forest College—I’m working with students from different backgrounds and incomes as well as first-generation students—and because of what we plan to do to create the next generation of scientists and physicians.”

Undergraduates at Lake Forest and Cambridge “have already made major headway into solving the function of our mystery protein, BrkB, using the zebrafish model of tuberculosis to look at its role in infection and using computational structural prediction to understand the function of BrkB at the molecular level,” Conrad said.

Renewable in four years, the R16 SuRE-FIRST Award “will ensure Lake Forest College students have ample opportunity to use the latest biochemical, microbiological, and molecular biological techniques in collaboration with major research labs,” he said. 

According to its website, the National Institutes of Health is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world. In fiscal year 2022, NIH invested most of its $45 billion appropriations in research seeking to enhance life, and to reduce illness and disability. NIH-funded research has led to breakthroughs and new treatments helping people live longer, healthier lives, and building the research foundation that drives discovery.