Category: Health

 In thier quest to develop nanosensors for early detection of plaque build-up in the arteries, researchers from the department of chemistry have hit upon an even bigger advancement:

Early detection of cellular components in the plaque that rupture and block arteries have long been held as potentially effective detection for heart diseases and their link to atherosclerosis.

A new study by University of Georgia researchers in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences department of chemistry, published online May 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, documents a technological breakthrough: Synthetic high density lipoprotein nanoparticles. A completely biodegradable synthetic version of the so-called good cholesterol, the nanoparticles represent a potential new detection and therapy regimen for atherosclerosis.

In the process of developing a nanoparticle sensor to detect unstable cellular components in atherosclerotic lesions, study coauthors assistant professor Shanta Dhar and graduate student Sean Marrache constructed the lipoprotein nanoparticle in Dhar's NanoTherapeutics Research Laboratory. In bench-scale animal trials, the synthetic HDL-mimicking nanoparticle showed significant reductions in total cholesterol and triglycerides.

"In creating all the processes for the nanoparticle to mimic the natural HDL and carry a signaling output, we were able to demonstrate excellent biocompatibility," Dhar said. "If we simply leave out the sensor, we have a very promising therapy for triglyceride reduction in the bloodstream."

Huge congratulations to Dhar and Marrache for this work. A new manufacturing process for completely synthetic HDL has very wide implications for human health, but the advances seen in Nanomedicine in just the last decade alone should help grow the support for this kind of research (and instruction) at universities around the world. That's how we get advances like this.

Image: Shanta Dhar, right, and Sean Marrache work in Dhar's NanoTherapeutics Research Laboratory at UGA, courtesy of UGA photographic services.

There are many ways this story can be written, but some new work from one of our very insightful research professors in psychology and his Vision Sciences laboratory reminds us on the basics of health and aging:

Lutein, the organic pigment that gives fruits and vegetables their color, is a powerful antioxidant that concentrates highly in the human brain and retina, particularly in the eye’s macular area. Lutein prevents the oxidation of fat in these areas to maintain the health of the brain and eyes while its absence leads to macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in the U.S.

This symbiotic relationship is documented in a new study from the Vision Sciences Laboratory in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences department of psychology published in the journal Nutrients in March.

“For years people have forgotten that our brain, along with the rest of our bodies, is composed of our diet,” said Billy Hammond, a UGA professor in the brain and behavioral sciences program and the study’s co-author. “Diet and exercise have a very big influence on how the brain ages and many other basic processes that encourage degeneration, and how our brain protects itself from that is by concentrating antioxidants like lutein in these particular areas.”

A lot of preventive healthcare is well within our reach and only a matter of effort. But we've made eating well a bit more problematic and changing our approach to food is going to necessitate a broad, societal effort. But knowledge is power, and this we know.

Image: A bowl of Mỳ Quảng, a type of Vietnamese noodle soup from Quang Nam Province, courtesy of a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. Mmmm.

Originally named from an outbreak at an American Legion convention in 1976, Legionellosis or Legionaires' disease is a severe type of pneumonia that affects only a small percentage of the population but can be fatal. UGA researcher Vincent Starai was recently awarded $1,503,565 by the National Institutes of Health to investigate how the bacterium that causes Legionellosis overcome the body’s defenses.

Starai is an assistant professor who holds a joint appointment with the departments of microbiology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and infectious diseases in the College of Veterinary Medicine.

...

Bacteria enter the lungs and are attacked by phagocytes, the white blood cells that fight infection. Normally phagocytes eat foreign particles, engulfing and breaking them into smaller fragments within a specialized compartment called the lysosome, but Legionella bacteria somehow block this process. Instead of fusing with the lysosome and disintegrating, the pathogen survives as a whole entity inside the phagocyte. The microbe then multiplies and reproduces inside the larger host cell. When the phagocyte finally dies, it releases a batch of new Legionella microbes ready to infect more phagocytes.
Over the next five years, Starai will look at proteins secreted by Legionella that prevent the host cell’s internal membranes from fusing with the lysosome. The fusion of these membranes is an essential step in the degradation of invading microbes.

The Franklin Visiting Scholar Series continues in April with a lecture by Obidimma Ezezika on effective strategies for improved public health through the adoption of biotechnology April 3 at 2 p.m. in room S175 of the Paul D. Coverdell Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences.

A program leader in ethics at the University of Toronto's Sandra Rotman Centre, Ezezika is an adjunct faculty member at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. He focuses on navigating ethical and commercialization challenges to innovative development initiatives in Africa.

Ezezika's lecture on "From the Lab to the Village: Innovative Global Solutions in Agricultural Biotechnology" will describe a strategic model developed to build trust and partnerships in health-related initiatives and to increase the success of biotechnology implementation to improve public health. The strategy helps align the goals of everyone involved in the "lab-to-village" pathway and provides farmers with a voice and an important role in the process, he said. The approach, which has been applied to projects sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, also improves management practices and accountability.

There's a certain disconnect between our ability to grow massive amounts of food or to produce highly effective drug therapies and the ability to make the same available to those around the world. It may seem counterintuitive at first that questions on the power of technology have localized answers and Ezezika's lecture will focus on how these two are connected, interrelated and perhaps even dependent if proven research can successfully impact publc health , as its potential obviously indicates.

Thsi lecture should attract people from a variety of corners of campus - great choice of subject and speaker, as we welcome back an alum.

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Yuri Milner jointly established a foundation to reward excellence in life sciences, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation. And a Franklin alumna is among the 11 inaugural winners of the $3 million award:

The newly created Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation on Wednesday announces the first 11 winners of an award intended to inject excitement into the sometimes lonely, underfunded quests to understand and combat cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's disease and other maladies.

Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook; Brin, who co-founded Google; and Milner, a venture capitalist, have dipped into their fortunes to sponsor awards worth $3m each, compared with a Nobel prize's monetary value of $1.1m.

Cori Bargmann (BS '81) is the Torsten N. Wiesel Professor at Rockefeller University and head of the Lulu and Anthony Wang Laboratory of Neural Circuits and Behavior who studies how animals detect and respond to a sensory stimulus. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience. She received her degree in biochemistry at UGA and as an undergraduate, studied with former Franklin College Dean Wyatt Anderson:

"I had to sit down on the floor for a while. I thought it must be a practical joke or a Nigerian scam," said Cornelia Bargmann, 51, who has pioneered work on neural circuits and behaviour at the Rockefeller University. "The scale of this is so outsized I think it will have a huge impact on the life sciences." Asked how she would spend the money she hesitated. "It's so far outside my normal planning I don't know. Get the car fixed?"

Congratulations, Cori. Your alma mater is proud and we know you'll find some great ways to put the money to use.

Something we almost missed: a terrific interdisciplinary study mapping the cerebral cortex in mammalian brains that sheds new light on its development and organization, was published in the December 2012 issue of Cerebral Cortex. This research brought together UGA faculty from the departments of computer science, cellular biology, psychology and physics and astronomy in the Franklin College; the Faculty of Engineering, the Bioimaging Research Center and the College of Veterinary Medicine, as well as faculty colleagues from Emory University, Athens Technical College, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, University of California, San Francisco and Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an, China.

Oh, and an image (left) from the study also made the cover of that issue of the journal.

Very interesting new research from the department of cell biology. The new work

has identified the neural pathways in an insect brain tied to eating for pleasure, a discovery that sheds light on mirror impulsive eating pathways in the human brain.

"We know when insects are hungry, they eat more, become aggressive and are willing to do more work to get the food," said Ping Shen, a UGA associate professor of cellular biology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. "Little is known about the other half—the reward-driven feeding behavior—when the animal is not so hungry but they still get excited about food when they smell something great.

"The fact that a relatively lower animal, a fly larva, actually does this impulsive feeding based on a rewarding cue was a surprise."

Two of the three research proposals selected for funding by the Centers for Disease Control in a recent competition are from Franklin College faculty:

Funded by the UGA Research Foundation and the CDC, the awards provide pilot research project funding to promote collaboration in scientific innovation and technology development at the interface of human, veterinary and ecological health, increase quality and output of research, and strengthen interactions between CDC and UGA scientists.

"We see this program as an opportunity for the complementary strengths of the CDC and UGA to unite," said Duncan Krause, professor of microbiology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and director of UGA's Faculty of Infectious Diseases. "By collaborating like this, it allows investigators from both institutions to add new dimensions to their research programs and take advantage of expertise they might not otherwise have access to."

Previous collaborations have generated nearly $2 million in additional funding from outside sources since the program began in 2009, and researchers have maintained strong working relationships that have accelerated scientific discovery.

Emphasis mine. Full project descriptions at the link. Congratulations to our researchers for doing everything they can to speed the pace of discovery while maintaining the highest levels of precision and effectiveness. Federal agencies and academia finding constructive new ways to work together raises the impact of both on the public good.

the recent story on UGA researchers developing methods to identify new influenza strains using lasers has generated attention across various media. The work is explained by some of our journalism students in this video report by Grady News Source:

UGA researchers have received significant NIH support for development of new tools to detect virus strains of influenza:

researchers are refining a nanotechnology-based method that uses laser light beams to more accurately predict emerging influenza strains-particularly strains with a risk of high mortality. The work will be funded by the National Institutes of Health and will total $1,124,914 over the next four years.

Influenza kills thousands of people each year worldwide-the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 3,000 to 49,000 flu-related deaths occurred annually in the United States alone from 1976 to 2007. Millions are immunized every year against influenza, but vaccines aren't always effective because it is difficult to predict the flu strain for a given year.

Richard Dluhy, professor of chemistry in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, along with Stephen Tompkins and Ralph Tripp, associate professor and professor of infectious diseases in the College of Veterinary Medicine, respectively, are refining a method used to identify virus strains so researchers can quickly detect components in viruses that affect influenza virulence.

Applications at the nanoscale are literally boundless, though a great amount of expertise and infrastructure is required to tap this potential. Our scientists are working together, leveraging their expertise but also that from other, already-published research to move forward on potential solutions to pressing problems. Congratulations to Dluhy, Tompkins and Tripp on this important work.