Noted parasitologist Dennis Kyle named GRA Eminent Scholar at UGA
Athens, Ga. — Dennis Kyle, one of the nation’s leading infectious disease researchers, will join the University of Georgia faculty as its newest Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar.
Kyle, currently a Distinguished Health Professor at the University of South Florida, will join UGA on Jan. 3, 2017, as the GRA Eminent Scholar in Antiparasitic Drug Discovery. He also will serve as the new director of UGA’s Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases, which Daniel Colley, a professor of microbiology, has led since 2001.
Established in 1998, CTEGD is made up of a wide range of research programs focused on the development of medical and public health interventions for diseases that contribute enormously to global death, disability and instability—including malaria, sleeping sickness, cryptosporidiosis, schistosomiasis and Chagas disease.
“Dr. Kyle is one of the world’s foremost authorities on malaria and other parasitic diseases,” said President Jere W. Morehead. “I am pleased that he will be joining UGA to advance the worldwide reputation of CTEGD and to strengthen the university’s partnerships across GRA institutions in the development of new drug therapies.”
Kyle will have a joint appointment in the department of cellular biology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and the department of infectious diseases in the College of Veterinary Medicine.
The Georgia Research Alliance has partnered with Georgia’s research universities to recruit world-class scientists who foster science- and technology-based economic development since 1990. GRA also invests in technology in strategic areas, helps commercialize university-based inventions and facilitates collaboration among academia, business and government. Kyle will be the 17th active GRA Eminent Scholar at UGA and the fifth to join the university in the past two years.
His research focuses on the mechanisms of antimalarial drug resistance and discovery of new antiparasitic drugs for a variety of infectious diseases, including malaria and visceral leishmaniasis, the world’s first and second most deadly parasitic infections, respectively.
Kyle was part of an international research team that identified a new antimalarial drug called ELQ-300, which has shown great promise in preclinical trials. The drug not only functions as a therapeutic but also blocks the transmission of malaria from mosquitoes to humans, potentially eradicating the disease entirely by breaking its life cycle.
With support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Kyle led another project to develop human liver models that could more quickly and accurately test potential drug candidates for malaria.
“We are very pleased to have Dr. Kyle join the GRA Academy of Eminent Scholars,” said C. Michael Cassidy, president and CEO of the Georgia Research Alliance. “His research is bringing a greater understanding of the effects of parasitic diseases and helping to develop drugs to combat some of the world’s deadliest diseases.”
Kyle’s laboratory also studies the brain-eating amoeba known as Naegleria fowleri, which causes a rare and devastating infection of the brain called primary amoebic meningoencephalitis, or PAM.
PAM normally has a fatality rate of about 95 percent, but Kyle’s laboratory is making new headway in the fight against this deadly disease. His laboratory recently discovered two new compounds that are 500 times more potent than drugs currently used to treat PAM infections-most of which were developed to treat other diseases-and his research could pave the way to new and desperately needed therapeutics.
“Millions of people have a stake in the research that’s being conducted in our Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases,” said Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Pamela Whitten. “With the addition of Dr. Kyle to this extraordinary group of faculty members, the University of Georgia is poised to play an even greater role in improving human health around the world.”
Kyle received his bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and his Ph.D. from Clemson University. He subsequently worked as a postdoctoral research associate in UGA’s department of poultry science.
Before joining USF, Kyle served in a number of positions both in the U.S. and abroad. He was chief of the Malaria Research Laboratory at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research; chief of parasitology for the Armed Forces Research Institute of the Medical Sciences in Bangkok, Thailand; and he served as deputy director of the Division of Experimental Therapeutics for the U.S. Army’s Drug and Vaccine Development program in Washington, D.C.
He also served as chair of the Genomics and Discovery Research Steering Committee and the Compound Evaluation Network for the World Health Organization.
Among other awards, he received the U.S. Army Achievement Medal in 1990, the U.S. Army Commendation Medal in 1988 and the U.S. Army Meritorious Service Medal. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and he was named Scientist of the Year by Malaria Foundation International in 2006.
Writer: James Hataway
Contact:David Lee
Researcher receives $5.2 million to develop affordable diagnostic test for Chagas disease
Athens, Ga. – An international team of researchers led by infectious disease experts at the University of Georgia has received $5.2 million from the National Institutes of Health to develop a more accurate, affordable diagnostic test for Chagas disease, a parasitic infection that kills more than 50,000 people each year in Central and South America.
Caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi and spread by blood-feeding insects commonly known as “kissing bugs,” Chagas disease is considered by many to be the most neglected of the neglected tropical diseases. While it is endemic to Latin America, Chagas disease is a growing threat in the U.S. and Europe.
Currently, there are only two drug treatments available; however, their usage is limited due to severe adverse reactions and the length of treatment required.
“Fortunately, there are a number of new drug discovery efforts in Chagas disease. But a major limitation is the difficulty in comparing the relative efficacy of current drugs to newly developed ones,” said Rick Tarleton, UGA Athletic Association Distinguished Research Professor of Biological Sciences in the department of cellular biology and Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases. “One simply can’t wait for 10 years (as current protocols require) to determine if a new drug is better than the existing ones.”
In Chagas disease, the number of parasites in chronically infected individuals is extremely low, making detection of parasites an unreliable test to determine if an individual is infected. Instead, the researchers have focused on the body’s response to infection by measuring the unique antibodies that the immune system creates in response to exposure to T. cruzi.
Tarleton and his UGA colleagues have already developed a successful multiplex blood test that measures antibodies to multiple T. cruzi proteins. While their test has proven to be useful in the laboratory, it is also expensive.
The primary goal of their current project is to make the test more sensitive by expanding the number of T. cruzi antibodies it can detect. But the researchers are also developing techniques to make the test more affordable so that it can be used in diagnostic centers in endemic countries.
“By monitoring a broader range of immune responses, we can achieve a rapid and reliable detection of changes in these responses after treatment. And moving from the current bead-based assay to an array platform makes the reagents and the detector for reading the assay much more affordable,” said Tarleton.
The “gold standard” for determining a cure is for a patient to convert from seropositive to seronegative, meaning that a blood test does not detect any T. cruzi antibodies. The conventional blood test requires a minimum of 24 months to show a decline in antibody response, and complete conversion to a negative blood test can take up to 10 years.
Over the past 12 year, the Tarleton laboratory and CONICET research scientist Susana Laucella’s laboratory in Argentina have shown antibodies tested by the multiplex method are potential surrogate indicators of treatment success. They believe this method will detect significant decline in antibody levels in less than 12 months.
In an effort to more rapidly determine treatment success, the project will also investigate additional potential markers of patients being cured, including antibodies to carbohydrate epitopes and changes in numbers of plasmablasts, the cells that secrete antibodies.
“We are looking for the earliest signs of treatment efficacy,” said Tarleton. “As parasite numbers are reduced due to treatment, we expect, based on data from other systems, that one of the first detectable changes will be in the immune cells that are responding to the presence of parasites and producing antibodies, the plasmablasts.”
The researchers will also be exploring the phenomenon of spontaneous cure-a cure in the absence of treatment-as only anecdotal information is currently available.
“The immune response to T. cruzi infection is actually very strong and as a result, spontaneous cure occurs,” said Tarleton. “However the frequency of cure without treatment is not known, nor are methods available that discriminate between those with active, chronic infections and those who have cured.”
Approximately 20 percent of individuals receive mixed results from conventional blood tests for T. cruzi infection. This is a large number of potentially infected people to leave untreated. However, current therapies have such severe side effects doctors often do not prescribe. Additionally, understanding why some individuals can “cure themselves” could lead to new treatments for the disease.
“The key to the success of this project will be the bringing together of basic research findings with great technology and access to patient groups and their samples-some collected over decades. That is what the partners in this work collectively bring to the problem,” said Tarleton.
Tarleton is joined by collaborators at the Blood Systems Research Institute, the University of California, Irvine, Emory University as well as partners in Argentina and Brazil. Their project is supported by the National Institutes of Health under award number R01-AI125738.
UGA Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases
The University of Georgia Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases draws on a strong foundation of parasitology, immunology, cellular and molecular biology, biochemistry and genetics to develop medical and public health interventions for at-risk populations. Established in 1998, the center promotes international biomedical research and educational programs at UGA and throughout Georgia to address the parasitic and other tropical diseases that continue to threaten the health of people throughout the world. For more information, see ctegd.uga.edu.
Writer: Donna Huber
Contact:Rick Tarleton