There is a cool new effort unifying several themes of interest to us here, namely global health, drug discovery, and open science efforts. Open Source Drug Discovery for Malaria (OSDD for Malaria) is a venture started recently by the lab of Dr. Matthew Todd, an organic chemist, at the University of Sydney and the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV). Basically, OSDD for Malaria will act as a hub for global efforts in open source drug discovery for malaria. You can ready more about the project at the link above or on the Highlight Health blog. Be sure also to circle them in G+ if you are into that sort of thing.
January 6, 2012
November 7, 2010
Synthetic biology meets global health: iGEM Jamboree 2010
Synthetic biology, the emerging field of biology in which organisms’ genes are engineered to perform non-natural tasks, promises to revolutionize the future of medicine. iGEM is an undergraduate competition in which teams from universities all over the world compete to engineer the most amazing new functions using standardized genetic parts, called BioBricks. The rate at which these teams innovate is unbelievable. I am the advisor for the UBC iGEM team, and our project this year was to develop a way to break down Staphylococcus aureus biofilms by using engineered bacteriophage cloned directly into the genome of the host organisms to make a “suicide bomber” cell strain that would only go off and express the phage when it encountered quorum sensing signals indicating a Staph biofilm nearby. Amazing project, but others were even more amazing. This year, several teams latched onto critical global health problems and attacked them using synthetic biology. The University of Washington iGEM team invented two new antibiotics, one a broad-spectrum antibiotic-expressing strain of bacteria that would exist as sentinels in the body and only demonstrate antibiotic effects when they detect a Gram-negative pathogen. The other antibiotic was a modification of this system against a specific species of Gram-positive pathogens. Imperial College London invented a synthetic biology diagnostic for schistosoma parasites in water before they infect human hosts. They even developed a plastic diagnostics chamber with a clear window for the user to see the color change caused by the genetic expression of a yellow-colored product. The best part? Their system was designed to be low-cost and modular so that it could be modified to detect other parasites, including Chagas, leishmania, and more. Other teams developed systems to fight celiac disease, yeast cells that kill TB, and re-engineered the bacteria that live is mosquito guts to try and kill off malaria at the source. Remember these are teams of mostly undergraduate students. This is what I mean when I say that science will prevail over antibiotic resistance and other biomedical challenges. In all, there were 130 teams from 26 countries at this year’s iGEM competition, the Jamboree. An amazing job was done by all – see the 2010 iGEM website for more details or follow the #IGEM2010 hashtag for up-to-the-minute details. I am tweeting using the #iGEM hashtag, so you can follow those, too.
September 12, 2010
Dengue fever returns to Florida
There is an article in this month’s issue of the The Nation’s Health about the return of dengue fever to south Florida. Dengue, which used to be endemic to Florida, has resulted in a number of cases since 2007, and work continues to determine if the disease has re-established itself. The most current working theory suggests that travelers from Mexico brought non-endemic dengue to south Florida and infected the local mosquito population, which then proceeded to infect others. Carina Blackmore, the Florida state public health veterinarian, says :
“We have the environmental conditions for these diseases,” Blackmore told The Nation’s Health. “But it’s human behavior that’s different now than 50 years ago, so it’s difficult for these diseases to get re-established.”
The article also discusses the emergence of Rocky mountain spotted fever as a widespread disease across the United States, but claims that climate change may not be responsible:
While the authors said Rocky Mountain spotted fever can no longer be considered only a rural or southern disease, theories attributing its emergence to “suburban development, changes in recreational activities or long-term changes in climate have not withstood careful investigation.”
So, although the specter of climate change and the re-emergence of once endemic diseases on the North American continent looms large, it is apparently not a closed case…yet.
