CATALYSTS TB EXPERT JOINS FACULTY Associate Professor Smriti Mehra, PhD, is on the trail of a killer. She is seeking to understand how tuberculosis (TB) evades the body’s immune system, hiding in the lungs often for decades, before becoming active and causing serious illness. She is also studying modified vaccines and new therapies to prevent and treat TB, with a particular interest in the immune signaling “IDO pathway.” In some cancer patients, inhibiting IDO improves the body’s immune response and shrinks tumors. Dr. Mehra and her team are investigating if inhibiting IDO can also help fight active and latent TB. Dr. Mehra officially joined Texas Biomed in August 2021, bringing her experience researching TB in nonhuman primates at Tulane National Primate Research Center.
Macrophages (red) in the lung produce a large amount of IDO (green) in response to TB infection. Dr. Mehra is studying if blocking IDO can help fight off TB.
FROM TRAINEE TO FACULTY Olena Shtanko, PhD, started at Texas Biomed in 2011 as a post-doctoral fellow, and has been an independent Staff Scientist for the past five years. When Texas Biomed began recruiting for a new virology faculty member, Dr. Shtanko successfully competed with external applicants, becoming Texas Biomed’s newest Assistant Professor in April. Her research focuses on Ebola virus, as well as other emerging pathogens of pandemic concern, such as Nipah virus. In 2021, she received more than $1 million in NIH grants to fund her Ebola research, which is carried out in the biosafety level 4 laboratory.
Dr. Shtanko is investigating how Ebola virus (green) sneakily spreads in the body through tunneling nanotubes connecting human macrophages (blue).
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