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Volume 12, No. 2, Summer 02 | Return to Table of Contents
New Program in Global Infectious Diseases Begins This Fall
Ellison Medical Foundation grants $5 million to establish international center for research and training dedicated to answering questions about the basic biology of parasites and the interrelationships with their hosts.
Every year, one to three million people die from malaria, a disease caused by the single cell organism Plasmodium. The parasite kills one child every 30 seconds; no vaccine is available. Tuberculosis infects one person every second, and over the coming decade, at least 30 million will die from the disease. In total, 25% of all deaths worldwide are caused by bacterial, viral, fungal, and parasitic pathogens.
The Marine Biological Laboratory has received a grant of $5 Million from the Ellison Medical Foundation of Bethesda, Maryland to establish a new interdisciplinary Program in Molecular Pathogenesis and Global Infectious Diseases. This program creates a one-of-a-kind international center for research and training dedicated to studying disease-causing organisms and the complex relationships these pathogens have with their hosts. The program will be part of the Josephine Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution at the MBL, and will build upon the Center’s existing strengths in molecular evolution and comparative genomics.
The new program will be directed by leading parasitologist and molecular biologist, Stephen L. Hajduk, currently Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics and Senior Scientist in the AIDS Center and the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Hajduk’s research program is broadly based in the area of molecular and biochemical basis of pathogenesis. Many of his studies focus on African trypanosomes, which cause human sleeping sickness, a fatal disease that has reemerged as a major health problem in sub-Saharan Africa. Hajduk’s appointment at the MBL begins this summer, when members of his current UAB laboratory begin setting up the laboratory in the program’s newly renovated space on the third floor of the MBL’s Lillie building. Hajduk plans to move to the MBL full-time in January of 2003.
“The importance of this research cannot be overstated. No single reason can explain our inability to eradicate or minimize the global impact of infectious agents on human health,” explains William T. Speck, a physician and Director and CEO of the Marine Biological Laboratory. A complex array of genetic and ecological mechanisms contributes to the virulence of diverse microbial forms.
“The most promising strategy for addressing this dynamic situation is to establish an interdisciplinary program that embraces new enabling technologies within the paradigm of molecular evolution,” says Speck. “In addition to studying cellular and molecular mechanisms, we must develop a way to explore how infection routes impact the evolution of microparasites and to determine whether infectious agents possess the genetic potential to evolve new transmission modes and increased levels of virulence.”
At the MBL, Hajduk and his colleagues will study the molecular basis of disease mechanisms, the evolution of virulence factors, pathogen diversity, and infectious disease dispersal in the environment. This will be a unique research environment that fosters interactions between scientists who study disease-causing organisms and experts in molecular biology, phylogenetics, and environmental microbiology.
The MBL has a rich history in studying the basic science of parasitism and infectious disease. Twenty years ago, the laboratory launched the field of molecular parasitology with the establishment of its Biology of Parasitism course, which continuously reinvents itself as it trains new investigators in this ever-expanding field. In addition, tropical health and infectious disease specialists from around the world travel to the MBL annually to attend the Immunoparasitology Meeting and Molecular Parasitology Meeting, held in the spring and fall, respectively.
In addition, the MBL’s Bay Paul Center, directed by Mitchell Sogin, has an active research program with strong ties to infectious disease. Center scientists have contributed many important insights about the evolution of parasitic protists. Recently, they embarked upon the sequence analysis of the Giardia genome. Exclusive of bacterial pathogens, this organism is a principal cause of diarrheal disease in children and adults. Therapeutic treatments for this parasite are almost as devastating as the disease itself. The availability of the Giardia genome may lead to the identification of novel treatments that have minimal side effects.
The Josephine Bay Paul Center in Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution was established at the MBL in 1996. The Bay Paul Center merges the latest technologies in molecular biology and evolutionary theory to advance our understanding of how living organisms are related to each other, to provide tools to quantify and assess biodiversity, and to assist in efforts to identify genes of biomedical importance. |
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