This story originally published on April 21, 2015 in observance of the COPH’s 30^th anniversary celebration.

Three Distinguished USF Health Professors in the Department of Global Health at the USF College of Public Health – Drs. Tom Unnasch, John Adams and Dennis Kyle – are ranked among the university’s best externally-funded investigators in terms of research dollars, and two are in the top five. A major focus of their research is malaria.

A fourth Global Health professor, Dr. Michael White, published a groundbreaking study just last month that may revolutionize the global fight against malaria.

Unnasch, the department chair, said much of Global Health’s research funding comes from external grants from the National Institutes of Health, primarily the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has come through with what he called “a substantial portfolio of funding”: a $4.5-million grant to Adams this year for developing new drugs and researching new genetic targets for malaria.

Kyle and Adams also have established collaborations with the Draper Laboratory to conduct research with artificial livers to study malaria in livers, which also is funded by the Gates Foundation, Unnasch said.

The combination of expertise and generous funding has helped put the department on the global cutting edge and in the thick of international connections that will help keep it there.

“The department is becoming quite well-known now as a research institution for malaria and other vector-borne diseases,” Unnasch said. “We have lots of good collaborations with people in Thailand at Mahidol University, and a lot of collaborations with people in Africa. There’s also quite a bit of contact between our department and people in the mosquito control field here in the state of Florida.”

Unnasch said those include regular work with the Florida Mosquito Control Association (of which Unnasch is on the board of directors), the Department of Health Laboratories, the Florida Department of Health, and various research projects with mosquito control in Hillsborough, Pasco, Manatee, Volusia and St. Johns counties, as well as with the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District in Monroe County.

For mosquito researchers, Unnasch said, the reason is obvious. For everyone else, it might be alarming.

“Florida’s the best place in the country if you want to do research on mosquito-transmitted diseases,” he said. “There are four arthropod-borne viruses, or arbovirus, infections that occur in the United States, and three out of the four are endemic to Florida. That’s why Florida spends $75-100 million a year on mosquito control. Only California spends more.”

Last month, the College of Public Health made headlines as Dr. Michael White, a professor in the College of Public Health’s Department of Global Health and the Morsani College of Medicine’s Department of Molecular Medicine, led a team of researchers that became the first to uncover part of the mysterious process by which malaria-related parasites spread at explosive and deadly rates inside humans and other animals.

As drug-resistant malaria threatens to become a major public health crisis, the findings could potentially lead to a powerful new treatment for malaria-caused illnesses that kill more than 600,000 people a year.

In a study published online March 3 in the high-impact journal PLOS Biology, the USF researchers and their colleagues at the University of Georgia discovered how these ancient parasites manage to replicate their chromosomes up to thousands of times before spinning off into daughter cells with perfect similitude – all the while avoiding cell death.

Malaria caused about 207 million cases and 627,000 deaths in 2012, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  About 3.2 billion people, or nearly half the world’s population, are at risk of malaria, according to the World Health Organization.

White said that this study, which he called the first for a USF Health laboratory in publishing original research in PLOS Biology, will help get more potential treatments in the pipeline.

“The more we understand their vulnerability,” he said of the parasites, “the better chance we can keep that pipeline full.”

With the collective efforts and expertise of Drs. Adams, Kyle, Unnasch and White, the USF College of Public Health will remain on the front lines of the fight against one of the world’s most daunting health threats.

Related stories:
USF-led study sheds light on how malaria parasites grow exponentially
New antimalarial drug with novel mechanism of action
Dr. Dennis Kyle receives NIH award to understand extreme drug resistance in malaria
Dr. John Adams leads workshop for Gates Foundation scientists conducting malaria research

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Artemisinin combination therapies (ACTs) have greatly decreased deaths caused by Plasmodium falciparum malaria, a mosquito-borne disease that accounts for roughly 90 percent of the world’s malaria mortality.

But Plasmodium falciparum is becoming increasingly resistant to ACTs, making an already dangerous parasite even more threatening.

“Like antibiotic drugs used to treat other microbial infections, antimalarial drugs put evolutionary pressure on the parasite to evolve or to go extinct,” explained Dr. Justin Gibbons, a post-doctoral scholar in the USF College of Public Health’s (COPH) Center for Global Health and Inter-Disciplinary Research. “Random genetic changes occur all the time in these parasites and some of these changes may confer resistance to the drug treatment. The greater the resistance, the more likely these altered parasites can successfully reproduce, and, over time, parasites can become more and more resistant to ACTs until they won’t work anymore.”

Gibbons and his fellow researchers, including those from USF’s Morsani College of Medicine and the University of Glasgow, have identified a mutation in the MRST gene in Plasmodium falciparum that increases its sensitivity to ACT.

Their study, “A novel Modulator of Ring Stage Translation (MRST) gene alters artemisinin sensitivity in Plasmodium falciparum,” was published in the journal mSphere in May. The first author of the study was Caroline Simmons, who recently graduated the COPH with her PhD.

“Most studies of ACT resistance mechanisms identify broad pathways that are changed, but not the contribution of specific genes,” Gibbons said. “This study identified and characterized a gene that regulates pathways relevant to ACT resistance mechanisms that had not been identified before.”

According to Gibbons, Plasmodium falciparum resists artemisinin treatment by entering a dormant state until the drug has been cleared by the body—and then resumes growth.

“Instead of entering a quiescent state that is artemisinin resistant, the mutant is more sensitive to artemisinin, suggesting the decreased translation during this period is hobbling the normal artemisinin response,” Gibbons said.

Identifying this mutant gene can be a boon to those treating ACT-resistant Plasmodium falciparum.

“This gene can potentially be targeted by drugs that will impair the parasite’s ability to respond to artemisinin,” Gibbons noted, “which could extend the useful life of ACT.”

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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According to the World Health Organization (WHO), nearly half of the world’s population in 2021 was at risk of malaria, a life-threatening disease most often transmitted to humans via mosquito bites. And while the disease is most prevalent in tropical countries, several cases of locally acquired malaria have recently been reported in the U.S.

While there are treatments for malaria, the main drug, artemisinin, is becoming less and less effective against a particularly deadly malaria-causing parasite called Plasmodium falciparum.

To better understand this drug resistance, a group of researchers, including those from the USF College of Public Health (COPH), set out to examine the genetic changes that occur in parasites treated with antimalarial drugs.

Their research, “Chemogenomic Profiling of a Plasmodium falciparum Transposon Mutant Library Reveals Shared Effects of Dihydroartemisinin and Bortezomib on Lipid Metabolism and Exported Proteins,” was published in June in the journal Microbiology Spectrum.

“Artemisinin works by causing damage to the parasite through a process involving a substance called heme, which is released when the parasite digests hemoglobin,” explained lead author Camilla Valente Pires, a postdoctoral scholar at the COPH’s Center for Global Health and Inter-Disciplinary Research who works in the lab of Dr. John Adams.  Adams is a malaria expert and a co-author of the paper. “However, the specific genetic changes that lead to resistance to artemisinin are complex and not yet fully understood,” Pires added. “That’s why, in this study, we took a systematic approach to study the genes responsible for how the malaria parasite responds to the oxidative stress caused by antimalarial drugs.”

The researchers, who, in addition to the team from the COPH, included scientists from USF’s Morsani College of Medicine, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Glasgow and the University of Cambridge, tested a group of genetically modified malaria parasites using a drug called dihydroartemisinin (DHA), which is similar to artemisinin, and another drug called bortezomib (BTZ), which blocks a specific process in the parasite. This allowed the scientists to create profiles of how the genes in the parasites interacted with the drugs. 

By comparing the response of the genetically modified parasites to the drugs, the researchers said they could better understand the parasite’s response—or lack of it—to artemisinin.

“We found that lipid metabolism and the export of proteins played important roles in how the parasites reacted to the drugs,” Pires said. “Surprisingly, we discovered that specific factors involved in protein export were significant differences between how DHA and BTZ worked.”

Pires said that by understanding these factors, scientists can gain insights into how the drugs work and how the parasite interacts with them.

“In the future, additional studies can build upon our findings and confirm the specific ways in which these factors interact,” Pires stated. “This will help us deepen our understanding of how the parasite responds to artemisinin and aid in the development of effective combinations of drugs for treating malaria.”

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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Following his success eradicating a major source of malaria, technology created by a USF public health researcher is being implemented by insect control agencies throughout Africa and across the Tampa Bay region. 

USF College of Public Health Associate Professor Benjamin Jacob created a smartphone app that pairs his algorithm with a drone and satellite images to identify locations of previously unknown mosquito breeding habitats to treat them within the same day. His technology has proven to be so successful, he launched Seek and Destroy, a program that allows him to train government agencies how to use the app in infectious areas in Cambodia, Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda – allowing them to quickly and efficiently direct resources to vulnerable areas before disease outbreaks can occur. 

“What those countries are dealing with is a tragedy beyond describing,” Jacob said. “For me, training the local people is huge. They want the knowledge and I think they’re willing to do whatever it takes to stop malaria.”

Jacob has focused much of his research in Uganda, where malaria is the leading cause of death, especially among children under five. As published in the American Journal of Entomology, he discovered that each of the 120 homes he studied was infested with at least 200 mosquitoes. With the help of the local insect control officers he trained, Jacob destroyed 100% of the identified habitats in 31 days and eliminated the blood parasite level in previously treated and suspected malaria patients in 62 days. 

The system works by identifying specific environments and organisms by their unique “fingerprint” — a red-green-blue value associated exclusively with a species or habitat. For Seek and Destroy to be successful, Jacob trained the drone to sense and capture image datasets through his algorithms that allow the system to understand key features, like mud or vegetation, based on their fingerprints. Each image is then processed and gridded with identified sources of water on those surfaces.

The data is then classified into different categories based on the presence or absence of mosquito larvae and whether the water is positive for mosquitoes. Paired with Jacob’s algorithms, the drone was 100% accurate in locating bodies of water where mosquitoes are most likely to breed. 

Jacob has researched mosquitoes since 2010, but he didn’t start testing artificial intelligence algorithms on drones until 10 years later. It was then that he discovered the potential impact of predictive mapping on mosquito control. 

“Instead of spraying entire fields, we can now just target the areas where the mosquitoes are.”

With the ability to pinpoint exactly where habitats are, harmful insecticide usage is decreased and the risk of mosquitoes building up a resistance also lessens. Implementation of the program on a county or state level could save taxpayers money because it costs thousands of dollars less than aerial fumigations. 

Thanks to a grant from the Joy McCann Foundation, Jacob’s mapping revealed more than 9,000 mosquito habitats with dengue and zika viruses present in Hillsborough, Manatee and Polk counties. He’s now training local authorities on the app and hopes a larvae control system will be complete by summer of 2023.

 Jacob is continuing his research with a new program, Slash and Clear, that will extend his current technology to identify black fly larval, a species known to cause onchocerciasis – a parasitic disease that causes blindness. The success of the program will confirm whether the technology can be used globally to control any type of invasive or dangerous vector.

Story reposted from USF Newsroom

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A team of researchers led by Dr. John Adams from the USF College of Public Health (COPH) have recently published an article looking at the pathways some deadly malaria-causing parasites use to survive not just human fever—the body’s natural defense against pathogens—but also the drugs designed to attack them.

The article, “The apicoplast link to fever-survival and artemisinin-resistance in the malaria parasite,” was published in the journal Nature Communications in July. The study’s three lead authors are the COPH’s Drs. Min Zhang, Chengqi Wang and Jenna Oberstaller, all of whom work in the college’s Center for Global Health and Infectious Disease Research and USF genomics program.

Malaria is still the most devastating parasitic disease of humans, with over 200 million cases each year. Resistance to frontline antimalarial drugs, such as artemisinin, is rising—threatening to undo decades of progress against the disease.

“There are no other drugs poised to replace artemisinin, and it’s critical we continue to study parasite biology to find weaknesses we can exploit to develop new interventions,” Dr. Oberstaller emphasized. “Ideal targets would be parasite-specific, as they would provide fewer worries about off-target effects on humans. We focused on studying how parasites survive human fever because the ability to survive such harsh conditions is a fairly unique talent—which we hypothesized to involve unique parasite pathways essential for parasite survival that could be promising targets for intervention.”

The research employed the use of a genome-editing technique called piggyBac-transposon mutagenesis that the team previously used to uncover genes essential for malaria parasite survival in ideal conditions.

“This technology was also successfully applied here to study parasite growth in response to human febrile temperatures,” Dr. Zhang said. “More than 200 piggyBac-mutant parasites were identified with differential responses to increased temperature, allowing us to determine which genes drive parasite survival of fever.”

Unexpectedly, the researchers discovered that malaria parasites use ancient pathways co-opted from plants to survive human fever—and further, they are now repurposing the same pathways to evolve resistance to front-line antimalarial drugs. A small parasite organelle derived from algae, called the apicoplast, is the key to surviving both the heat and artemisinin derivatives.

“We noticed similarities between processes driving parasite fever-response and the mechanism of drug resistance to artemisinin—which made us investigate the connection further. We discovered that parasite genes with plant orthologs [genes in two different species that evolved from the same ancestral gene] tend to increase their expression level in response to fever conditions, and many of those same genes are also increased in drug-resistant parasites taken from clinical patients,” Drs. Wang and Oberstaller said. “This leads us to speculate that these ancestral genes enable parasite survival of extreme temperatures and artemisinins.”

The research will help scientists develop multiple antimalarial drugs that target multiple, unrelated pathways.

“Knowing not only how a drug works, but also which pathway(s) it targets, enables us to develop the smartest types of intervention,” Dr. Oberstaller explained. “This will lead to better combination therapies to combat emerging resistance.”

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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A story of growth

One USF College of Public Health (COPH) internal seed grant has helped the research efforts of Dr. Mahmooda Khaliq Pasha, assistant professor of social marketing, blossom into more than half a million dollars.

As a result of the work she was able to do because of the COPH’s internal grant, Khaliq Pasha said she’s obtained and applied for additional research grants, including funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH), and completed two published manuscripts, with more in the works. The $28,000 grant she was awarded in 2019 helped her to kickstart a long-standing collaboration with the USF College of Engineering to decrease exposure to lead through water in Madagascar.

The team developed a social marketing campaign, centered on a training program for local manufacturers of hand pumps—teaching them to replace lead components with locally sourced materials.

“As you can imagine, in a community with a low understanding of lead and its health consequences, sudden change in the norm can create a sense of unease,” said Pasha, who is also associate director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Social Marketing and Social Change. “That’s especially true if it’s initiated by folks who aren’t necessarily representatives of your community.”

Khaliq Pasha brought in her expertise of social marketing to work with the community to make those changes for a better public health outcome.

As a result of the COPH’s seed grant, Khaliq Pasha has been able disseminate the results in:  

“Midstream Players Determine Population-Level Behavior Change: Social Marketing Research to Increase Demand for Lead-Free Components in Pitcher Pumps in Madagascar,” in International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in 2021.

“Health and Economic Consequences of Lead Exposure Associated with Products and Services Provided by the Informal Economy” in Environmental Science & Technologyin 2021.

She said she credits the COPH’s seed grants for doing what they are intended to do.  

“The funding was vital to my success as an assistant professor, it provided me with the support to start an independent research project,” she said.

She said that she now has a research team with the College of Engineering that meets weekly, consisting of a postdoctoral fellow, doctoral students, and master’s students who are advised on conducting research from both an engineering and social marketing lens.

With the NSF grant, Khaliq Pasha said they will be able to expand this even further. She will be serving as co-PI alongside principal investigator Dr. Jeffrey Cunningham of the USF College of Engineering.

“In essence, we’re creating a pipeline of social marketers and engineering students working together on water safety and quality issues in an international setting. We are forging this relationship between our students, our faculty, to get this new initiative off the ground,” she said.

“The COPH internal grants provide resources that are sufficient for doing high-quality research and disseminating it.”

2021-2022 Awardees

According to Dr. Dina Martinez Tyson, chair of the college’s research committee funding these grants, a total of 15 proposals were received for this year and seven were awarded.

“We are delighted that COPH can provide this level of support to faculty. Our hope is that the funds provided will stimulate research collaborations and lay the foundation for future external grant applications, as illustrated by Dr. Khaliq Pasha’s work,” Martinez Tyson said. “We had a very robust response to the call for proposals that was released this past summer. To see that level of interest from faculty is outstanding. We are glad we were able to fund the top seven proposals with support from COPH.”

The 2021-2021 awardees are:

Dr. Monica Uddin, professor of psychiatric genomics

Epigenetic profiles of treatment resistant depression (TRD) and response to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

“This seed grant is enabling our research team to ‘take a risk’ that would otherwise have been prohibitively expensive/costly to undertake. The TRD population is challenging to work with due to the severe and chronic nature of their depressive symptoms. This funding is allowing us to work with an initial pilot site we have started to work with in South Tampa—The TMS of South Tampa Clinic under the direction of Dr. Kenneth Pages, while also recruiting from Dr. Currier’s Neurotherapies clinic here at USF. In addition, the project is facilitating major new research opportunities for the first PhD student in genomics, Jan Dahrendorff, who will be critical to all aspects of this work.”

Dr. Rays Jiang, associate professor of systems biology

Tracking the first global pandemics

“The first global pandemics happened more than 1,000 years ago. Large waves of plagues (541-767 AD) torched across the entire Mediterranean Basin, affecting Northern Europe, South Arabia and Africa. Similar to the spread of COVID-19, global trade and cultural exchange precipitated the calamity of the first pandemic. My colleagues in USF Anthropology, [Morsani] College of Medicine, and Florida Atlantic University and I will use ancient DNA to track down this first world pandemic. The team will study biomaterials of plague victims excavated in Jerash, Jordan, a hub of the historical silk-road linking continents, and a nexus of trans Afro-Eurasian trade. We aim to uncover pathogen transmission patterns and human genetics in one of the world’s first cosmopolitan cities. The team will establish transdisciplinary expertise from anthropology to genomics and is in the process of developing related NSF projects with international outreach programs.”

Dr. Amy Alman, associate professor of epidemiology  

The Oral Microbiome, Immunophenotype, and COVID-19 Post-Acute Sequelae

“Approximately 30 percent of those who survive the acute phase of COVID-19 experience enduring symptoms, such as fatigue, loss of taste or smell, dyspnea, “brain fog” and chest pain.  This has been called “post-acute sequelae of COVID-19” (PASC) and has affected individuals across the full spectrum of disease severity.  It is not currently understood what factors lead to PASC. I am very excited to be working with an excellent team of investigators across USF to accomplish the objectives of this project.  This grant will allow us to better understand post-acute sequelae of COVID-19.”

Dr. Amy Stuart, professor of environmental health and science

Pilot study and methods development on the use of low-cost sensors and citizen science to reduce air pollution exposure inequality and empower vulnerable communities

“Traffic-related urban air pollution disproportionately affects historically disadvantaged communities. For example, neighborhoods that are predominantly Black and Brown or have high poverty rates often have higher levels of air pollution exposure; residents also have poorer outcomes for related health effects. However, these same communities have also been less empowered to engage in the environmental decision-making processes that could affect such inequality. With this grant, we will develop methods and pilot data for community air pollution monitoring in the Tampa Bay area using low-cost sensors and citizen science, and we will plan a study on the effects of this community participation in research on empowerment of historically disadvantaged neighborhoods in urban decision making.  I am excited to have this opportunity to address such an important public health problem affecting our local communities, while positioning our team to compete for a large external grant that could help to improve urban environmental health and health equity broadly.”

Dr. Amber Mehmood, associate professor of global disaster management, humanitarian relief and homeland security

Prephugee: Pilot test of a curriculum to increase awareness and self-efficacy toward disaster preparedness

“Florida is home to an array of natural disasters. It also has the largest refugee program in the nation. Strengthening local preparedness is viewed as an essential element in effective response and recovery. The complexity of preparedness among refugees is further increased due to limited resources, temporary housing and language barriers. Many refugees and visitors underestimate the enormity and scale of natural disasters. In addition, people require sufficient knowledge, motivation and resources to engage in preparedness and planning, which are offset by a lengthy resettlement procedure. In this project called “Prephugee,” we are developing a community-based, customized and culturally sensitive educational program to build awareness, increase knowledge and self-efficacy at individual and household levels to plan and prepare for the common emergencies in Florida. This study is the first to assess the feasibility of strengthening self-efficacy among Tampa Bay refugees and employs two delivery settings to evaluate the efficacy of classroom vs. community outreach in meeting the goal of achieving household disaster preparedness.”

Dr. Jesper J. Madsen, research assistant professor

Improving stability of Plasmodium vivax malaria vaccine antigen

“Plasmodium vivax is the leading cause of malaria outside of Africa. The blood-stage infection causes a debilitating, often life-threatening disease especially in young children, and an increased risk of low-birth-weight babies in pregnant women in the resource-limited endemic countries. There is parasite resistance to currently available anti-malarial drugs. Hence a vaccine is urgently needed to protect against disease and prevent transmission. [This grant] gives me the opportunity to enter a new field of tremendous public health significance. I think we have a solid chance of actually improving on the current state-of-the-art in the most promising vivax malaria vaccine candidate. Vaccine development is usually extremely laborious and typically will take many years or even decades. People might forget this since the most recent breakthrough in vaccine development, the COVID-19 vaccine, was created in what appears to be a record-breaking time. However, it’s important to realize that pre-pandemic scientific research done by McLellan and Graham, who was engineering the spike protein for a MERS vaccine, just happened to work out perfectly for also creating a COVID-19 vaccine in only months. We are seldom this lucky and for a malaria vaccine to be successful, there’s still more work to be done. With this proposal, we can take another step in that direction.”

Dr. Arlene Calvo, associate professor of community and family health

Inequality of Latinx communities in the U.S., Latin America, and Globally: Salud Latina USF

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, it was evident that public health interventions were lacking appropriate science-based information in a language that the communities understand; this applies to many health issues and social outcomes. The Latino population has been one of the most affected due to the COVID pandemic, both in the U.S. and in their countries of origin. The Salud Latina USF initiative is an appropriate forum to understand the reasons for the disparities.”

Story by Anna Mayor, USF College of Public Health

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The pandemic could not divert USF’s top faculty researchers from making big discoveries that shape our understanding of the past, present and future.

One USF researcher brings dinosaurs to life through augmented reality while a colleague explores the origins of life through planetary chemistry. Another faculty member’s research sounded early alarms about people turning to alcohol amid the stress and fear of the COVID-19 pandemic, while her colleague is the co-founder of the new Center for Justice Research & Policy at USF. And in USF’s Department of Physics, a professor’s discovery holds the potential to revolutionize the Internet of Things.

These are just a few of the faculty research achievements newly recognized with USF’s Outstanding Research Achievement Awards. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic’s interruptions to campus life in 2020, this year’s awards recognize 22 faculty members—the largest group to date—for their achievements that defied the disruption caused by the last year’s shutdown.

“The University of South Florida’s reputation as a top urban-based research university is fueled by our innovative faculty and researchers,” said USF President Rhea Law. “I congratulate each of the outstanding awardees for such a productive year in their work to change lives and shape the future.”

The largest internal recognition of its kind at USF, the annual nominations are submitted by deans, department chairs, center and institute directors, and associate deans of research. The nominations are reviewed by members of the USF Research Council. Each faculty member receives $2,000 with the award and recognition at an event later in the fall.

Awardees include USF College of Public Health’s Dr. John Adams and Dr. Lynn Martin.

John H. Adams, PhD, FAAAS, FASTMH

Distinguished USF Health Professor and Distinguished University Professor, Center for Global Health Infectious Disease Research and USF Genomics Program

Dr. Adams is an international expert in malaria research. His research focuses on host‐parasite interactions and improving the understanding of infection and pathogenesis in malaria. His group is actively engaged in vaccine and drug discovery projects. In 2020, he received a National Institutes of Health grant to accelerate vaccine development for vivax malaria, the most prevalent type of malaria outside of the African continent. The project builds upon his group’s successful development of a greatly improved liver culture system for the early infective stages of human malaria parasites. As the lead investigator on the grant, Dr. Adams brought together an international consortium from six institutions to prepare a vaccine for clinical trial. He also the lead investigator for an NIH 2020 exploratory grant to collaborate with researchers in Thailand to evaluate the pharmacogenomics of an antimalarial drug.

“The rapid development of safe, effective mRNA vaccines was an amazing accomplishment and highlights the importance of ongoing investment in biomedical research. Although perceived as a new technology, the mRNA vaccine approach has been in development for some time and many research groups were able to quickly pivot to apply the technology for SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development. Indeed, our NIH U01 project will be able to leverage some of the successful mechanics of vaccines for our vivax malaria vaccine in development,” Dr. Adams said. “This award mainly reflects the achievement of my research team. My team members are a great group of dedicated scientists and it is too bad these are given only as awards to individuals.”

Lynn B. Martin, PhD

Professor, Global Health and Infectious Disease Research

Dr. Martin is an internationally-renowned expert in disease ecology and invasive species. In 2020, he was awarded a $1.5 million, four-year National Science Foundation grant to fund an international project on the molecular genetics of one of the world’s most invasive species, the house sparrow. The research will take him, postdocs and students to Senegal, Vietnam, Norway, Spain, Australia, and New Zealand to study how the sparrows became one of the most broadly distributed animals in the world. He also submitted several other large grant proposals in 2020 which are still pending decisions. In 2020, he and his trainees and collaborators published 10 papers in high-profile journals including American Naturalist, eLife, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, and Bioscience. Two of those publications were invited (eLife and Bioscience), and all but two papers included a student or postdoc from his lab. Dr. Martin is also the co-creator and co-host of the popular podcast, Big Biology.

“COVID has helped me appreciate how privileged I am to work in a place where my job is to provide solutions for important problems. As my own research involves diseases that spillover from wildlife, like SARS-COV2, this pandemic has motivated me to work harder to find ways to predict and prevent the next one,” Dr. Martin said. “I’m really excited to receive this award, but science like the kind done in my lab is a group effort.  This award wouldn’t have been possible without the excellent work of so many colleagues and especially students.”

Story reposted from USF Research and Innovation Newsroom.

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The USF College of Public Health (COPH) recently signed an agreement with the Faculty of Tropical Medicine at Mahidol University in Thailand.

“The birthplace of artemisinin resistance”

As part of the agreement, Thai faculty and students exploring RNA-sequencing and drug discovery will have the opportunity to come to COPH for training. RNA is a molecule similar to DNA; RNA sequencing is a technique used to reveal the presence and quantity of RNA in a sample.

This new partnership will provide COPH students from the USF genomics program with an opportunity to travel to Thailand for an international field experience in drug discovery.

“This partnership with Mahidol University was created to better understand malaria drug resistance in Southeast Asia, the birthplace of artemisinin [an anti-malaria drug] resistance,” noted Dr. John Adams, a Distinguished University Professor specializing in malaria research who helped negotiate the agreement. “We hope this partnership will endure for many years to come.”

Background

The agreement stems from a series of previous collaborations between the COPH’s Adams’ Lab and Mahidol’s Dr. Kesinee Chotivanichthe.

In 2018, the Adams’ Lab published a paper titled “Uncovering the essential genes of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum by saturation mutagenesis.” The lab was able to insert point mutations (changes to a single nucleotide) within the whole genome of Plasmodium falciparum (one of the species of parasites that causes malaria). This made it possible to screen a wide range of P. falciparum mutants against drugs known to cause resistance in natural infections in order to understand the reason for resistance.

Testing theories

The next step is to test hypotheses on patient isolates exhibiting drug resistance. That’s where the partnership with Mahidol becomes particularly important.

“Resistance to anti-malarial drugs can develop in a region and spread throughout the world,” Adams said. “Dr. Chotivanichthe is studying malaria drug resistance in Thai patients and can provide P. falciparum patient isolates that are able to be screened in the Adams’ Lab. The comparison of known and unknown mutations will help us learn more about drug resistance. By better understanding how this takes place, we can suggest more effective parasite drug targets and also, one day, predict the potential for drug resistance.”

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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Jyotsna Chawla, an infectious disease researcher working in the USF College of Public Health’s (COPH) Adams Lab, is lead author of the journal article “Targeting Gametocytes of the Malaria Parasite Plasmodium falciparum in a Functional Genomics Era: Next Steps.” She is currently investigating sexual stages of the deadly malaria parasite for her doctoral thesis project.

The article, published in March in the journal Pathogens, was co-authored by fellow COPHers Drs. Jenna Oberstaller, a postdoctoral scholar, and John Adams, a malaria expert, Distinguished USF Health Professor and director of the college’s genomics program.

What was studied

Malaria is a life-threatening disease transmitted to people through the bite of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes. The World Health Organization reported that in 2018, Plasmodium falciparum accounted for 99.7 percent of estimated malaria cases in the WHO African Region, 50 percent of cases in the WHO South-East Asia Region, 71 percent of cases in the Eastern Mediterranean and 65 percent in the Western Pacific.

“When a mosquito bites an individual, the infective forms of the parasite ride in with the saliva and quickly migrate to the liver where they remain dormant for a few days,” explained Chawla, a doctoral candidate in molecular medicine at the Morsani College of Medicine. “Following incubation, thousands of parasites enter the bloodstream where they undergo multiple rounds of division in the red blood cells, exponentially increasing the number of parasites in our body, making us feel very sick. However, not all parasites are asexually dividing and being cleared with antimalarial drugs—these are the non-replicating forms called gametocytes. Gametocytes are picked up during a blood meal and thus provide the crucial link for human-to-vector transmission.”

Chawla’s journal article focused on interrupting Plasmodium falciparum transmission—and, thus, malaria—by targeting gametocytes.

“Weaknesses in parasite biology can be exploited to develop new therapies, but this calls for better tools and techniques,” Chawla said. “Previous work in the Adams Lab achieved a much-needed breakthrough—they used transposons (or what we call jumping DNA elements) to randomly insert itself in the parasite genome, which generated about 38,000 mutants. In my study, I proposed to use the Plasmodium mutants to uncover gametocyte biology of the malaria parasite.”

Implications

Chawla says her research is important because blocking transmission is a critical aspect of the malaria elimination strategy. “It would be ideal to have a multiunit vaccine that targets different stages of the parasite including transmission,” she said. “To get there we must fill the knowledge gaps in the biology of the malaria life cycle.”

“We were able to identify sexual-stage genes and are now working on validating our findings,” Chawla added. “Next, we are gearing to perform a first-ever whole genome sexual-stage screen in Plasmodium falciparum, a study that will scan 5,000 mutants simultaneously. Through these attempts, we anticipate gaining insight into the key pathways and processes essential for sexual development and transmission that can be targeted in the deadly malaria parasite.”

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

The post Using genomic approaches to study malaria transmission [VIDEO] appeared first on College of Public Health News.

“What interests me most about public health is the intersection between health and place. There are many interesting geographic variables that influence health outcomes,” said USF College of Public Health alumna Sam McKeever.

After earning her master of science in public health (MSPH) degree with a concentration in global communicable diseases in 2014, McKeever began her international career tackling health issues related to environmental factors around the world, particularly those caused by mosquitoes.  

Her journey started as a malaria country officer with the Clinton Health Access Initiative in Windhoek, Namibia, in 2015.

“This position afforded me the opportunity to assist in drafting surveillance and control recommendations for the national malaria control program and Ministry of Health,” she said.

From there she came back stateside as an assistant vector ecologist for the San Gabriel Valley Mosquito Vector Control District in West Covina, Calif. where she assisted in conducting West Nile virus surveillance for the San Gabriel Valley.

McKeever says it’s her work as a geographic information science (GIS) and entomology consultant for PAHO/WHO in the Eastern Caribbean Islands, Bahamas and Washington, D.C. that has been most rewarding for her as a public health professional. 

“My proudest professional achievement was assisting the Bahamian government with developing an emergency vector-borne disease surveillance and control plan during my deployment in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian,” she said.

In fact, in 2021 PBS featured her work conducting arbovirus surveillance post Hurricane Dorian in 2019, highlighting McKeever’s vital role in the Bahamas determining the potential for an outbreak of dengue, malaria and other diseases.

McKeever, who was born in Chicago but raised in Tampa, Fla., is currently serving as program manager at TEPHINET, a division within the Task Force for Global Health, an affiliate of Emory University.

She’s managing projects that prepare field epidemiologists to mobilize to national and international public health emergencies.

“This includes increasing their deployment opportunities by connecting them to partners, increasing their training, and documenting their successes,” she said.

McKeever, who also earned her bachelor’s degree from USF in international relations with double minors in political science and geography in 2011, said she loves the energy and diversity of the team she is currently working with.

“The opportunity to work with a program that focuses on growing field epidemiology training programs and their alumni across the world is what attracted most to my current position,” McKeever said.

McKeever said her time as a USF COPH student helped to lay the proper career foundation she needed.

While a COPH student, she completed an intensive thesis on the rise of urban agriculture in Accra, Ghana, and it’s connection to the proliferation of the Anopheles gambiae , a malaria vector mosquito, and its breeding sites.

“The MSPH program at USF introduced me to new and crucial research skills that I went on to utilize in other positions,” she said. “Since graduating from my MSPH program, I have utilized geographic information systems to support various nations in developing effective vector-borne disease surveillance/control in emergency and non-emergency settings.”

McKeever said she’s also thankful for the support and mentorship she received as a student, especially from Dr. Ran Nisbett and Dr. Anna Parsons.

“Dr. Nisbett’s passion for tropical and community health in Liberia deeply inspired me to pursue career opportunities that allow me to work directly with disadvantaged communities,” she said. “Dr. Parsons’ unwavering dedication to women’s health inspired me to develop side projects post-graduation that empower marginalized women.”

McKeever plans to stay on the path of prevention in the future as well.  

“My future aspirations include continuing to work in global health and supporting underserved communities and countries,” she said. “My public health practice is global health. My passion is strengthening the public health workforce internationally.”

Alumni Fast Five:

What did you dream of becoming when you were young?

A doctor.

Where would we find you on the weekend?

Hiking in Northern Georgia.

What is the last book you read?

“The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe,” by Peter Godwin.

What superpower would you like to have?

Flight!

What’s your all-time favorite movie? 

My all time favorite movie is “Liars Dice.”

Story by Anna Mayor, USF College of Public Health

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