Dr. Jyoti Mathad awarded NIH R01 on HIV, TB and Gestational Diabetes during pregnancy

The Center for Global Health is proud to announce that Dr. Jyoti Mathad, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Obstetrics & Gynecology in the Center for Global Health at Weill Cornell Medicine, was recently awarded an NIH R01 Research Project grant award.  (R01). Funding for this grant category is extremely competitive and Dr. Mathad scored in the 9th percentile of applications submitted last year.

Dr. Mathad’s research focuses on the immune and metabolic changes of pregnancy and their impact on the pathogenesis of infectious diseases. For the past 11 years, Dr. Mathad has been conducting NIH-funded research on the epidemiology, pathogenesis, and clinical sequelae of tuberculosis (TB) in pregnancy.  In 2017, she received an NIH/NIAID K23 Award to compare the host immune response to M. tuberculosis in pregnant and non-pregnant women in India. Leveraging her K23 cohort, she was also awarded an NIH/NICHD R21 to examine how maternal HIV, even when controlled, impacts placental immunology and programming of the fetal immune system. As part of her K23-funded research, Dr. Mathad discovered that pregnant women living with HIV in India were twice as likely to develop gestational diabetes compared to pregnant women without HIV. This novel observation formed the basis for her first independent NIH-funded R01 Award.

Her recent R01 award is titled, “HIV, gestational diabetes and TB in pregnancy” and is also known as Pragathi, which means progress in the local language in Pune, India. Pragathi is a longitudinal study that will describe the epidemiology and pathogenesis of HIV and gestational diabetes (GDM), as well as the effect of GDM on the immune response to M. tuberculosis in pregnancy. The results of this study will identify pregnant women at the highest risk for active TB for targeted TB prevention, improve GDM screening for women living with HIV and potentially identify novel targets for GDM prevention and treatment.

In additional to this already impressive researchall of her incredible research, Dr. Mathad is also committed to mentorship and education. She is a co-leader of the Women in Global Health Research Initiative at Weill Cornell and is devoted to mentoring students, residents, and fellows interested in global health, both in New York and India. She is also a mentor on a T32 training grant focused on the pathogenesis of infectious diseases, the Scientific Liaison of the HIV section in the International Union Against TB and Lung Diseases, and an investigator in the International Maternal, Pediatric, and Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials network (IMPAACT).