Interestingly, while it seems like a lot of people understand pathology is lab oriented, they often don't realize that few MD pathologists are heavily basic-science research oriented. In this case, lab != research, at least not necessarily. From what I've seen, few of those active in this forum follow the kind of research path you're asking about, so while it's a fair question I'm not surprised it's not getting much action. But maybe someone else will stumble in who can better answer it.
That said, access to active research in fairly specific topics is institution dependent -- if you find a place with someone who already has a grant and is actively researching that topic, then there will probably be a good opportunity to get involved. Otherwise you would need a lot of your own drive to get funding and start something from scratch, which is very difficult at the best of times, and IMO would be extremely difficult while also in residency even if you build in a large chunk of research time through the program.
