6 minute read
CHANGING LIVES IMPACTED BY INFECTION
Janeli Castrejana with her husband Jacob and three children.
ornings are busy at the Castrejana household. With three children to cart to school before she heads to work, Janeli Castrejana has gotten good at multitasking. The 30-year-old San Antonian always dreamed of becoming a mother. A health crisis in her early 20s could have robbed her of having a family. Janeli contracted HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, when she was only 21. “I was devastated,” she said. “I thought my life was over. I thought I was going to die.” The AIDS epidemic has killed 35 million people since it began in the 1980s. More than 40 million people in the world are infected with HIV today.
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MThanks to compassionate caregivers and breakthroughs in scientific research, the HIV virus is undetectable in Janeli’s system. Janeli is not cured, but she controls her disease with medications. She became a parent without transmitting the virus to her unborn babies. “It felt like a miracle,” Janeli added.
THE FIGHT IS UNDERWAY
Infectious diseases of many varieties are on the rise. The World Health Organization reports infectious diseases kill more than 17 million people a year. Thirty new diseases have emerged in the last 20 years.
The enemies are stealthy — viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites. They infect. They spread. They evolve. Science must keep up. “Combating infectious diseases is one of the most important health issues of our time,” said President/CEO Larry Schlesinger, M.D. “While research has helped stop the spread of many infectious pathogens and reduced human suffering, science still has a long way to go to conquer these serious health threats.”
2018 saw some amazing strides in the fight against infectious diseases, some of which were made by our scientists at Texas Biomed. For example, Professor Jean Patterson, Ph.D. and Professor Suzette Tardif, Ph.D., took part in a collaborative study that demonstrated the Zika virus may be triggering miscarriages and stillbirths while going undetected.
Tuberculosis (TB) researchers Dr. Schlesinger and Staff Scientist Eusondia Arnett, Ph.D., found promising experimental cancer
chemotherapy drugs may help knock out TB. Teaming up with a commercial biopharmaceutical company, Texas Biomed scientists are helping test a promising treatment for Ebola virus.
Our specialists in malaria are working to find out why the mosquito-borne parasites that cause the disease are becoming drug resistant.
“2018 was a strong year with regard to grant and contract submissions and awards, groundbreaking research, and high impact publications from our faculty at Texas Biomed,” said Professor and Vice President for Research Joanne Turner, Ph.D.
Using our population of nearly 2,500 animals at the Southwest National Primate Research Center on campus, scientists are developing new models for liver cancer, testing an experimental hepatitis B vaccine and scanning the brains of baboons to help pinpoint a biomarker for mental illness. Our researchers have developed the marmoset as a new and crucial animal model to study aging and infectious disease.
FOCUS ON THE FUTURE
In 2018, Texas Biomed built on its strengths and focused on the future with a new 10-year Strategic Plan. This plan has become the Institute’s road map for growth.
The plan includes the expansion of research to include other threatening infectious diseases impacting human health. Common hospital infections like MRSA and sepsis kill thousands of men and women before their time. Food-borne illnesses cause untold suffering. The dream for a better influenza vaccine is still unrealized.
A recent report commissioned by Texas Biomed from economic development researcher TEConomy concluded “basic
science is where key developments in infectious disease innovation will continue occurring for the foreseeable future.”
We have begun the process of recruiting new teams of top tier scientists and their research groups with complementary expertise dedicated to collaborative scientific research.
As part of our focus, we’ve created three inter-related scientific programs: Host Pathogen Interaction, Disease Intervention & Prevention and Population Health.
The Host Pathogen Interaction program focuses on the biology of infection and the relationship between the body and the pathogen. Program Lead and Assistant Professor Ian Cheeseman, Ph.D., explained the three new growth areas within this program include the study of vectors (like
(l to r) Ricardo Carrion, Jr., Ph.D., Program Co-lead; Shelley A. Cole, Ph.D., Program Co-lead; Jordi Torrelles, Ph.D., Program Lead; Ian Cheeseman, Ph.D., Program Lead; Luis Giavedoni, Ph.D., Program Co-lead; Timothy Anderson, Ph.D., Program Lead
A 3-D rendering of HIV virus in the blood stream. Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a chronic, potentially life-threatening condition caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
mosquitoes) that carry disease, mucosal immunology (areas of attachment of pathogen) and developing and using new models of infectious diseases.
“To identify the next major discoveries which transform human health, we need a better fundamental understanding of how a disease is controlled by a host, transmitted by a vector or exacerbated by a pathogen,” Dr. Cheeseman said. “This requires a multipronged approach where we build realistic models of infection combining animal and laboratory methods, probe the sites of invasion and infection in the human body and study the genetic variation in the hosts, pathogens and vectors driving disease outcomes.”
The Disease Intervention and Prevention program focuses on the development of new ways to diagnose, treat and vaccinate against diseases to reduce the effects of the illness or cure it. Program Co-lead and Professor Ricardo Carrion, Jr., Ph.D. said this program will grow in areas related to multi-drug resistance and hospital-acquired infections, experimental diagnostics and therapeutics and next generation vaccines.
“The Disease Intervention and Prevention program provides an environment that fosters collaboration and synergy within the Institute’s current research areas of vaccine and therapeutic development, while spurring research in new growth areas such as multidrug resistant pathogens and hospital-acquired infections,” Dr. Carrion explained. “The critical mass of scientists working alongside each other in these fields in an atmosphere that strives for excellence will bolster Texas Biomed as a leader in infectious disease research.”
Population Health will focus on how factors like DNA, age, nutrition and co-infections impact susceptibility to disease. Program Co-lead and Associate Professor Shelley Cole, Ph.D., outlined the three growth areas of this program as how the genes of individuals in a population may increase their susceptibility to infection, risk of infection due to other health conditions and the role the environment plays in the development of infectious diseases.
“Population Health is a key component of biomedical research in that population health studies are used to define problems of public health importance, to determine and characterize potential causes and modifiers of a disease in the population and to demonstrate the effectiveness of prevention and intervention approaches,” Dr. Cole said. To create an environment where these scientific programs can flourish — and to accommodate our growing team — plans have been laid out for structural changes that will enable the expansion of our staff and update the aging campus. Some of the construction is well underway, as highlighted on page 18.
SCIENCE GIVES US A FUTURE
For millions of people around the world like Janeli Castrejana, Texas Biomed’s focus on infectious diseases is a source of hope for the future.
77 years ago, the bold founder of Texas Biomed, Tom Slick, Jr., had a vision. He believed “the welfare of mankind can be best advanced through the scientific endeavor.” The power of discovery through focused biomedical research will improve the human condition. Our focus honors Slick’s vision.
