CONGRATULATIONS to Dr. Eric Skaar for two very significant appointments: his election as Division Officer for Division D (Microbe-Host Interactions) of the American Society for Microbiology and for his election to the American Academy of Microbiology. Academy Fellows are eminent leaders in the field of microbiology, who are relied upon for authoritative advice and insight on critical issues in microbiology. This is a great accomplishment for Dr. Skaar and an immense honor for the division and the department as a whole.
CONGRATULATIONS to Tim Hill, graduate student in Dr. Sebastian Joyce's lab for receiving the AAI - 2015 Poster Award. Tim's abstract was found to be exceptional by the AAI Abstract Programming Chairs.
HPI division meeting: March 31, 2015 room A-5305 MCN, 3:00pm. Eric Sebzda, PhD is presenting.
2nd Friday Happy Hour: 3/13/2015 at MCN A5305, 4:00pm - Hosted by the Algood and Boothby labs.
Publications: A total of 16 publications from HPI faculty have been posted on Pubmed in February. The listings and links to all publications follow below.
Featured Publication: "Mechanism of Human Antibody-Mediated Neutralization of Marburg Virus" - Flyak et al., Cell 2015, Feb. 26 Vol. 160 (5):893-903
This month's featured publication comes from the laboratory of Dr. Jim Crowe and it elucidates a mechanism by which human antibodies neutralize Marburg virus.
Marburg virus (MARV) and Ebola virus (EBOV), which are members of the family Filoviridae, infect humans and non-human primates, causing a hemorrhagic fever with mortality rates up to 90%.
A dozen outbreaks of Marburg virus infection in humans have been reported to date. As of January 7, 2015, there have been in excess of 20,000 confirmed, probable, and suspected cases of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in the current EBOV outbreak in nine affected countries (Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America), with more than 8,000 deaths.
No licensed treatment or vaccine exist for filovirus infection. However, recent studies showed that filovirus glycoprotein (GP)-specific neutralizing antibodies (nAbs) can reduce mortality following experimental inoculation of animals with a lethal dose of EBOV.
Flyak and colleagues tested plasma of a MARV survivor previously infected in Uganda for the 50% neutralization activity against the Uganda strain of MARV.
A panel of neutralizing antibodieswas isolated that bind to MARV glycoprotein (GP) and compete for binding to a single major antigenic site.
Remarkably, several of the antibodies also bind to Ebola virus (EBOV) GP.
The data suggest that MARV-neutralizing antibodies inhibit virus by binding to infectious virions at the exposed MARV receptor-binding site, revealing a mechanism of filovirus inhibition.
Dr. Crowe's team has also also co-authored a second paper in the same issue of Cell with colleagues at Scripps who determined the structure of one of the neutralizing antibodies in complex with the Marburg GP, revealing the first structure of that GP at atomic resolution.
What are your thoughts? Feel free to muse by sending us an email (maria.hadjifrangiskou@vanderbilt.edu, helen.chomicki@vanderbilt.edu)
