Thompson appointed to two DOD grant review boards for conditions that impact military forces

Dr. Stuart A. Thompson, microbiologist and professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, was recently appointed to two review boards of the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs.

These Department of Defense programs fund research to develop innovative diagnostic and treatment strategies for diseases and conditions that impact U.S. military forces. Thompson is serving a three-month term on the Discovery-Emerging Infectious Diseases and Discovery-Antimicrobial Resistance peer review panels.

The Emerging Infectious Diseases panel looks at projects involving etiology, prevention, detection, diagnosis and treatment. The Antimicrobial Resistance panel looks at projects such as development of new antifungals and antibacterials for antibiotic-resistant strains.

Thompson’s research, which is funded by the National Institutes of Health, includes studies of Campylobacter jejuni, a bacterial species that is the leading cause of gastroenteritis in the world, and novel ways to attack it. Much like its better-known but less common counterpart Salmonella, Campylobacter also is often antibiotic resistant.

Thompson, an MCG faculty member since 1999, has also been a grant application reviewer for the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, Military Infectious Diseases Research Program Joint Program Committee-2, since that time. This DOD group supports bacterial, parasitic and viral infection prevention, screening, diagnosis and treatment. He also recently served on several NIH Topics in Bacterial Pathogenesis Special Emphasis Panels and an American Heart Association microbiology peer-review committee.