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Author: Donna Huber

Signals from the head and germinative region differentially regulate regeneration competence of the tapeworm Hymenolepis diminuta

Donna Huber on October 7, 2025

Competence to regenerate lost tissues varies widely across species. The rat tapeworm, Hymenolepis diminuta, undergoes continual cycles of shedding and regenerating thousands of reproductive segments to propagate the species. Despite its prowess, H. diminuta can only regenerate posteriorly from a singular tissue: the neck or germinative region (GR). What cells and signaling pathways restrict regeneration …

Insulin-like peptides activate egg formation in the Asian malaria mosquito Anopheles stephensi

Donna Huber on October 7, 2025

Background: The mosquito family Culicidae diverged into the subfamilies Anophelinae and Culicinae approximately 179 million years ago. Most female mosquitoes are anautogenous and must blood-feed on a vertebrate to produce eggs. Regulation of egg-producing gonotrophic cycles is best understood in the culicine Aedes aegypti. Anopheline mosquitoes encode all of the hormones that regulate gonotrophic cycles in …

Ghosts of symbionts past: The hidden history of the dynamic association between filarial nematodes and their Wolbachia endosymbionts

Donna Huber on October 1, 2025

Many, but not all, parasitic filarial nematodes (Onchocercidae) carry intracellular, maternally-transmitted, alphaproteobacterial Wolbachia symbionts. The association between filarial nematodes and Wolbachia is often portrayed as mutualist, where the nematode is reliant on Wolbachia for an essential but unknown service. Wolbachia are targets for anti-filarial chemotherapeutic interventions for human disease. Wolbachia of Onchocercidae derive from four …

Pharmacokinetic Analysis of Sustained-Release Buprenorphine Formulations in Owl Monkeys (Aotus spp.)

Donna Huber on September 24, 2025

Buprenorphine is an opioid used for pain management in veterinary medicine but which requires frequent dosing to maintain therapeutic levels. Sustained-release buprenorphine (BSR) formulations can overcome this limitation, but genera- or species-specific studies that determine the time profiles of buprenorphine after dosing are sparse for NHPs. The objective of this study was to determine the …

Recent insights in the development and functions of insect hemocytes

Donna Huber on September 15, 2025

Hemocytes mediate defense responses that are collectively referred to as cellular immunity. Here I highlight recent progress in the study of hemocyte ontogeny and function. Studies conducted primarily in D. melanogaster, mosquitoes and Lepidoptera identify a number of transcription factors and signaling pathways that regulate hemocyte differentiation and proliferation. Recent single cell RNA sequencing studies …

O-fucosylation affects abundance but not localization of select nucleocytoplasmic proteins in Toxoplasma gondii

Donna Huber on September 1, 2025

  Toxoplasma gondii is a highly successful intracellular mammalian and avian pathogen that must adapt to a wide range of intracellular and extracellular environments. A mechanism that may support this is the modification of hydroxyamino acid rich sequences of nucleocytoplasmic proteins with O-fucose. O-fucosylation of possibly hundreds of proteins is mediated by a single highly …

Use of the Slow-Delivery Platform, VacSIM, Shapes the Host Immune Response to Increase Protection Against Influenza Infection

Donna Huber on August 30, 2025

Influenza virus is a leading cause of global morbidity and mortality due to acute lower respiratory infection, even with the widespread use of multiple licensed influenza vaccines. However, antigenic drift during influenza replication can cause vaccine-induced antibodies to poorly neutralize influenza virus, thereby reducing vaccine effectiveness. To help overcome this problem, we leveraged a hydrogel …

Activity of Antibacterial/Antifungal Compounds against the Protozoan Parasite, Toxoplasma gondii

Donna Huber on August 28, 2025

We investigated the antiparasitic activity of several antimicrobial drug leads against Toxoplasma gondii tachyzoites and, in one case, bradyzoites. Carbazole and phenylthiazole aminoguanidine anti-infectives, originally developed as antibacterial and antifungal agents, showed potent activity, with IC50 values as low as 2 μM. This potency was comparable to that observed with the tuberculosis drug candidate SQ109 and a series …

Benzo-ring modification on Malaria Box hit MMV008138: effects on antimalarial potency and microsomal stability

Donna Huber on August 15, 2025

Tetrahydro-β-carboline 1 (MMV008138) controls growth of asexual blood-stage Plasmodium falciparum by inhibiting IspD, an enzyme in the MEP pathway for synthesis of a critical metabolite, isopentenyl pyrophosphate (IPP). We have previously investigated the structure activity relationship (SAR) of three of its four rings (B, C, and D). In this report we investigate the SAR of …

Antimalarial spirooxindole alkaloids with a rare 6/5/5/6/6 polycyclic skeleton from the fungus Penicillium citrinum YSC-1 isolated from a medicinal plant

Donna Huber on August 5, 2025

OSMAC (one strain many compounds) provides a convenient strategy to produce chemically diverse and novel natural products. In the study, the application of an OSMAC approach on a fungus Penicillium citrinum YSC-1 isolated from a medicinal plant Chloranthus japonicus, using different culture media, led to the isolation and identification of seven new spirooxindole alkaloids penicitrimicins …