Gregg Gagliardi and Dr. Sebastian Tas present a $15,000 check to Xingmin Sun, Ph.D. and his team for research on the Clostridium difficile (C-Diff) infection.

The Anthony Gagliardi Memorial Foundation recently presented a $15,000 gift to support Clostridium difficile research at the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine’s Department of Molecular Medicine.

“Our family sees a need to help support research to wipe out this terrible bacterium that is impacting many of our seniors in hospitals, rehabs and nursing homes,” said Gregg Gagliardi, who hosts an annual golf tournament to raise funds for C. difficile research in central Florida. His father, Anthony, died in 2014 after a short battle with colon cancer and the C. difficile infection.

Xingmin Sun, Ph.D, and his team at USF are working on vaccine options for the C. difficile infection, a significant public health threat that attacks a person’s intestine and is difficult to fight with antibiotics. Dr. Sun shared his team’s progress this summer at the American Society for Microbiology Microbe 2018 Conference.