It Takes a Campus to Stop Infectious Diseases

UGA has several centers, colleges and departments working together to battle malaria and other deadly diseases.

Malaria is one of the deadliest diseases known to man. It can lead to extreme illness, marked by fever, chills, headaches and fatigue. More than half the world’s population is at risk of contracting the disease, and those who develop relapsing infections suffer a host of associated costs.

“Fighting infections and developing new drug and vaccine targets requires detailed knowledge of a pathogen and how it functions,” said Jessica Kissinger, researcher and Distinguished Research Professor of Genetics in the Franklin College of Arts & Sciences. “When I’m teaching in an endemic area like Africa, it isn’t unusual to find a student who needs to sleep during part of the workshop because they have malaria.”

It’s one of the challenges she and her collaborators in the University of Georgia’s Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases (CTEGD) are trying to combat.

UGA CENTER FOR TROPICAL AND EMERGING GLOBAL DISEASES

When the Center was established in 1998, there were only a couple of faculty members studying Plasmodium, a microscopic parasite that infects millions of people in mostly tropical/subtropical regions and exposes them to malaria. Now, 25 years later, the center has become a world-class powerhouse of multidisciplinary malaria research. Scientists examine various species of the dangerous parasite, studying its life cycle and the mosquito that transmits it.

To understand the parasite, you must dive deeply into its genetic code.

The Malaria Host-Pathogen Interaction Center, one of Kissinger’s projects at UGA, was a seven-year, multi-institutional effort funded, in part, by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to create data sets that could be used in systems biology of the host-pathogen interaction during the development of disease. Kissinger paired her work in Plasmodium genomics with her interest in computing by helping create the database with information from the Plasmodium genome project completed in 2002.

“Wouldn’t it be neat if, from the beginning of infection all the way to cure, you knew everything that was going on in the organism all the time?” Kissinger said, noting the project’s goal.

UGA CENTER FOR VACCINES AND IMMUNOLOGY

Earlier in 2023, Chet Joyner, PhD, a faculty member in the Center for Vaccines and Immunology and the Center for Tropical and Emerging Diseases in the College of Veterinary Medicine, received a $1.1 million grant from Open Philanthropy to perform preclinical testing of a vaccine designed to prevent reinfection from malaria.

Joyner is collaborating with Dr. Richard Bucala, MD, PhD, of Yale University to test the vaccine that targets Plasmodium-encoded Macrophage Migration Inhibitory Factor (pMIF), a protein secreted by Plasmodium falciparum, a pathogen that causes malaria.

“A vaccine that lessens the impact of this disease will have incalculable value in terms of lives saved and the quality of life of those in the affected areas,” said Lisa K. Nolan, DVM, PhD, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine.

Across UGA, faculty continue to collaborate on solutions for diseases like malaria as well as many other infectious agents that impact the globe’s population in developed and underdeveloped nations. As the urgency to stop these deadly diseases grows, so too does our resolve, and our resources, to find the cures the world so desperately needs.

UGA CENTER FOR THE ECOLOGY OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES

The UGA Center for the Ecology of Infectious Diseases (CEID) is also joining the malaria fight.

CEID members Ashutosh K. Pathak, PhD, and Justine C. Shiau led a team of researchers to investigate the impact of mosquitoes feeding on both human and non-human animals and the development of vector-borne parasites and pathogens, particularly the spread of malaria and how to control mosquitoes with rising insecticide resistance.

The study determined that mosquitoes that feed on both sources are more likely to transmit malaria to humans. This suggests that the ecology of the vector has a clear influence on malaria transmission.

The most widespread of malaria parasites is Plasmodium vivax, which persists in the liver of patients and can cause a relapse of the infection following treatment for the symptomatic blood infection.