Txbiobytes From Texas Biomed

Developing vaccines and therapies to successfully treat some of the world’s deadliest diseases for which there are no known treatments or vaccines requires the safest laboratory in the world in which to study them. Texas Biomedical Research Institute is home to one of only six such labs in North America and the only operational BSL-4 lab owned by a private institution. Designed for maximum containment, BSL-4 labs offer a safe setting for scientists and the surrounding environment. This unique resource has allowed scientists in Texas Biomed’s Department of Virology and Immunology to become world leaders in the fight against emerging diseases and bioterror agents, such as SARS, Anthrax, Ebola virus and more. Our Biosafety Level 3 lab works on contagious pathogens that are treatable, but contagious. Right now, scientists are focusing on findings new treatments and vaccines for Mycobacterium tuberulosois (M.tb) which causes tuberculosis, one of the world's deadliest infectious diseases.

Grandmother is portrayed as the big bad wolf in a whooping cough vaccine PSA. A killer infectious disease called Pertussis is a bacterial infection that causes whooping cough. Vaccines had brought the numbers of cases down dramatically, but now they’re on the rise again and Texas Biomed animals and scientists are involved in the search for something better to treat this health problem that kills more than a hundred thousand infants a year. Pertussis has seen an alarming resurgence in the last decade. That’s surprising, given that a vaccine for this infectious disease has existed since the 1930s. The original vaccine, made with whole-cell killed Bordetella pertussis bacteria, was very effective but associated with some adverse events. A newer acellular pertussis vaccine with fewer adverse events was approved by the FDA in 1997. Recent epidemiological studies have found, however, that the immunity conferred by the new vaccine wears out during adolescence. That’s a problem, because although whooping cough isn’

A baby rhesus macaque basks in the sunshine with its mother. Rhesus macaque monkeys are nonhuman primates that originate from the jungles of India. Hundreds of them live at the Southwest National Primate Research Center on the Texas Biomedical Research Institute campus. Macaques are useful for studying diseases from HIV to Ebola. While the macaques live in indoor/outdoor housing, the scientific work performed on their samples takes place in a lab setting.   Hundreds of rhesus macaque monkeys are housed at the Southwest National Primate Research Center.

The Texas Biomedical Forum started in 1970 as a group of women on a mission – to support the hope and promise of life-saving research at Texas Biomedical Research Institute. What started as the brainchild of a handful of women has turned into an organization that is more than 300 members strong. The Forum raises hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in support of the science at Texas Biomed. From left to right: Jody Lutz, Tena Gorman, Ruth Eilene Sullivan, Courtney Percy The purpose of the Texas Biomedical Forum continues to be to support the Texas Biomedical Research Institute through community relations,volunteer services and fundraising. The Forum hosts student tours of the 200-acre Texas BioMed campus for a handful of high school science programs each year. These tours of San Antonio’s biomedical research jewel expose these bright young students to the exciting possibilities of a career in science. The student tours are a fantastic opportunity for area high school students, and a rewarding experi

© Clem Spalding Photography The baboon is widely used as a model for the study of genetics of complex diseases, and continues as a successful model for many chronic and infectious diseases, including insulin resistance, obesity, heart disease, hypertension and osteoporosis. This resource has also been used to further studies in contraception, tissue engineered heart valves, epilepsy, immune system aging, pertussis, sepsis and ischemic stroke. SNPRC provides pedigreed baboons for research projects investigating the etiology and pathogenesis of human disease. We have developed and refined the baboon model for biomedical research through selective breeding, inbreeding, environmental manipulations and identifying naturally occurring conditions. Our pedigreed baboon colony was established in 1972 with 200 feral baboons. Today, SNPRC is home to the world’s largest baboon colony, including about 1,100 animals. The structure of the pedigreed baboon colony has been developed carefully over seven generations of babo

The Southwest National Primate Research Center at Texas Biomedical Research Center is one of only two national primate research centers that provide marmoset research resources. Our resources include the only large population (>70) of aged marmosets (>10 years) in the country. Common marmosets have been a biomedical research resource since the early 1960’s, used predominately in studies of infectious disease, immunology and neuroscience.  Historically, they have been a more commonly used research model in Europe and Japan than in the United States. However, cellular and molecular resources have recently been developed that greatly enhance the value of marmosets in research and have increased interest here in the United States. As a non-endangered anthropoid primate with small size, the highest fertility and the shortest life span, marmosets also offer a remarkably cost-effective, high efficiency nonhuman primate model for biomedical research. In addition, many areas of research take advantage of unique feat

Dr. Mark Gorelik holds a mouse bred to have symptoms of Kawasaki disease. Kawasaki disease is a rare childhood illness that can cause serious heart trouble for patients later in life. Now, Texas Biomedical Research Institute and Children's Hospital of San Antonio are teaming up to research possible interventions to cut down on the serious side effects of the disease. Dr. Mark Gorelik is a pediatric rheumatologist. He uses a mouse model now housed at Texas Biomed. Jean Patterson, Ph.D., is helping him on the project. Listen to learn more about this exciting collaborative project. Having trained veterinarians taking care of animals at Texas Biomed made it a good fit for the Kawasaki research project.

Winka Le Clec'h, Ph.D., Tim Anderson, Ph.D., and Frederic Chevalier research schistosomiasis at Texas Biomed. Schistosomiasis is an important tropical disease caused by schistosome trematodes (a parasitic blood fluke). Those parasites are found in South America and the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. An estimated 200 million people worldwide are infected with schistosomes and 200,000 people die each year. Schistosomiasis is a waterborne disease. Infected freshwater snails release larvae (cercariae) which can infect humans during their water related activities.   Only one drug – praziquantel – is currently available to treat patients but drug resistance starts to emerge. Vaccines have been designed in laboratory but have never conferred decent level of protection to people in the field. Therefore new approaches are needed to identify drug targets, understand drug resistance, predict vaccine efficacy by understanding parasite population diversity and identify potential vac

Dr. Cheeseman and his team are coming up with new ways to look at different strains of malaria. Alieu Dia, Ph.D. and Ian Cheeseman, Ph.D., use flow cytometry to study malaria parasites.   Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease that kills hundreds of thousands of people around the world every year. Scientist Ian Cheeseman, Ph.D., of Texas Biomed specializes in the genetics of the parasite that causes malaria. His newest study published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution was recently highlighted in the Editors Choice section of the prestigious journal Science. “At the basic level we simply do not know what’s in a malaria infection, even though this has profound implications for how we think about treating and eradicating this disease,” Cheeseman said. Using various technologies, these scientists are literally cracking open cells and using single cell DNA sequencing to discover previously unknown characteristics of malarial infections.

Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio is a new focal point for TB research, with scientists studying the disease from dozens of angles, researching new therapies and a better way to vaccinate people against the insidious infection that targets the lungs. Tuberculosis is an ancient health threat that’s still claiming several thousand lives each day around the globe. It’s the world’s deadliest infectious disease. And TB isn’t just a third world concern. It’s an American problem, too. The World Health Organization Global TB Strategy aims to eradicate TB by 2035. In 2016, Bexar County had one of the four highest rates of TB in the state, along with Harris, Dallas, and Hidalgo Counties. Texas, California, Florida and New York have the highest rates of tuberculosis in the U.S. Eusondia Arnett, Ph.D., and a team of researchers are working on TB at Texas Biomed. The new President/CEO of Texas Biomed, Larry Schlesinger, M.D., is a globally-recognized expert researcher in the TB field. He is joined at