Department of Microbiology & Immunology News
Roughly one out of three women ages 14-49 in the United States develop a vaginal bacterial imbalance known as bacterial vaginosis (BV) during their lifetime. BV is characterized by unpleasant odors, and potentially painful side effects, as well as the risk of associated health issues later in life. More than half of the patients who seek medical care do not respond to the first-line treatment, the antibiotic metronidazole, leading to recurrence. (Drexel News) Read more.
LymeX Diagnostics Phase 3 Prize Awarded
With an estimated 476,000 cases in America annually, the U.S. has an urgent need for new Lyme Disease diagnostics. That’s why Drexel University is thrilled to be a Phase 3 winner in the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation’s $10+ million LymeX Diagnostics Prize. Through Phase 3, the Drexel University College of Medicine team led by MaryAnn Comunale, had access to webinar modules, mentorship, and networking opportunities as we planned a clinical performance study to validate our proposed solution. Industry supporters Labcorp and Quest Diagnostics provided non-financial in-kind support, helping our team deepen our understanding of the diagnostics industry, how clinical laboratories operate, and how to work with commercial laboratories. Learn more.
Bioscience in Berks
Josh Mell, PhD, professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, will present at the Bioscience in Berks: Innovation Symposium on Friday, January 17, 2025. Learn more.
Researchers from Drexel University College of Medicine have identified new drugs that show early success in shrinking breast cancer tumors that have metastasized in the brain. The discovery marks the first time that targeting a key metabolic enzyme in cancer cells in the brain has shrunk tumors in a mouse model. Read more.
Saturday, July 27, 2024
8 a.m. - 7 p.m.
Attendees will:
- Gain a historical view of microbe-AD research over the last 30+ years
- Understand current state of the evidence on various microbes associated with Dementia/AD
- Explore the potential role of microbial dysbiosis; the gut, the brain and beyond
- Glean neuro-immune and host factors that relate to microbial/dysbiotic pathogenesis
- Explore microbiome identification and characterizations: limitations and opportunities
- Discover diagnostic and drug development implications and strategies
Learn more or register.
The annual Golden Apple Awards recognize outstanding service, teaching and mentoring by Drexel University College of Medicine faculty and professional staff. The honorees are nominated by each class of medical students who vote to determine the award winners. Read more.
Dean’s Travel Award
Congratulations to Abhishek Rao, recipient of the Dean’s Travel Award for the spring 2024 award cycle. Rao is a PhD candidate in the Microbiology & Immunology program. The Dean’s Travel Award is meant to partially defray the cost of attending a scientific meeting at which a graduate student is making a presentation, that is related to the student’s graduate study. In this cycle, each award was offered at the maximum of $750.00 per awardee.
Drexel University and Thomas Jefferson University are longtime allies in the fight against cancer. That partnership was formalized in 2013 as the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center Research Consortium, a relationship that was reinvigorated in 2021, in preparation for the center’s application to be named a National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center. Read more. (Pulse Spring 2024)
Alumni News
Congratulations to MS in Biomedicine and Business alumna Hilary Schultz, for being featured in the Top 100 Innovators & Entrepreneurs magazine as their cover story.
IIE Honors 2022: IIE Scholar Rescue Fund featuring Dr. Helen Kimbi and Hartley R. Rogers
An educational game designed by a team from the Institute for Molecular Medicine and Infectious Disease at Drexel University College of Medicine recently took home a silver medal from the International Serious Play Awards competition in Toronto, Canada. Read more.
ILADEF Neil Spector Award
ILADEF Neil Spector Award was presented to PhD candidate Ben Hasland-Gurley at the 2023 ILADS scientific conference. This award is given to the best scientific presentation of the conference. Ben presented two talks: Immunoglobulin N-Glycans Role in Diagnosing Lyme Disease and Immunoglobulins N-glycans Impare Host Response to Lyme Disease. Ben’s win is the second consecutive win for a Drexel Microbiology & Immunology program. Graduate student Kayla Socarras was awarded the honor in 2022. Prior to the past two years, awardees have been senior investigators with international reputations. Ben is mentored by Dr. Mary Ann Comunale in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology.
VOA Burmese Profile
Michiko Thwe, biomedical engineering PhD candidate, was interviewed about their research in Alzheimer's Disease by VOA Burmese. Watch video on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhmS3HYFoCE&t=14s (အယ်လ်ဇိုင်းမားရောဂါ သုသေသနပြုစုနေသူ).
Van Duuren Fulbright Travel Grant
Keziah Adjei, Molecular Medicine program student, was awarded a Van Duuren Fulbright travel grant to attend America Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) conference in Chicago from October 18 to 22, 2023. Adjei was one of only four recipients this year of this award which provides funds for travel‐related educational expenses to select Fulbrighters studying in the fields of sciences and public health. The America Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH), draws tropical medicine and global health professionals representing academia, foundations, government, not-for-profit organizations, non-governmental organizations, the private sector, the military and private practice. The meeting is designed for researchers, professors, government and public health officials, military personnel, travel clinic physicians, practicing physicians in tropical medicine, students and all health care providers working in the fields of tropical medicine, hygiene and global health.
CRISPR Cutout™ Game Wins Silver Medal
The CRISPR Cutout™ game was awarded a silver medal at the 2023 International Serious Play Award competition in Toronto, Canada. CRISPR Cutout™ is the fourth in a series of mobile educational games developed by the Institute for Molecular Medicine and Infectious Disease. CRISPR Cutout™ introduces the molecular mechanisms of a cutting-edge genome editing technology called clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, or CRISPR. Players create a gene-editing tool to use in a cell to cut out a sequence of HIV DNA. Learn more about CRISPR Cutout™.
Student News
Congratulations to PhD/MD student Benjamin Haslund-Gourley, who was awarded the Goldie Simon Preceptorship Award to complete a summer project examining the glycosylation of autoantibodies associated with Lupus entitled, "High-Throughput Method to Identify Lupus-Specific Autoantibody Glycosylation." Benjamin will present his findings this September.
Congratulations to MS in Molecular Medicine student and Fulbright Foreign Program awardee Keziah Adjei on recently having her P.E.O. Peace Scholarship renewed.
The Commonwealth Universal Research Enhancement (CURE) Program funds collaborative biomedical research that aims to improve the health of Pennsylvanians. Read more.
The annual Golden Apple Awards recognize outstanding service, teaching and mentoring by Drexel University College of Medicine faculty and professional staff, who are nominated by each class of medical students for the honor. Students vote to determine the award winners. Read more.
Kayla Socarras, PhD M&I ’22 Receives T32 Award
Kayla Socarras, PhD microbiology & immunology ’22 and postdoctoral associate at the Translational Genomics Group at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT received a T32 award from the Mass General Brigham Training Program in Precision and Genomic Medicine.
National Institutes of Health Grants
Akhil Vaidya, PhD, professor of microbiology and immunology, and Sandhya Kortagere, also professor of microbiology and immunology received a five-year NIH grant ($3.7 million total award) for their project “Advancing Fast-acting Antimalarials That Disrupt Na+ Homeostasis in Parasites.” Vaidya also received five-year renewal of his NIH grant ($3.5 million total award) entitled “Molecular pathways affected by drugs that disrupt Na+ and lipid homeostasis in malaria parasites.”
PLoS One
Swati Dass, PhD microbiology and immunology ’22, Michael Mather, PhD, research associate professor of microbiology and immunology, Joanne Morrisey, research instructor, Liqin Ling, former visiting graduate student, Vaidya, and Hangjun Ke, PhD, assistant professor of microbiology and immunology, published “Transcriptional Changes in Plasmodium falciparum Upon Conditional Knock Down of Mitochondrial Ribosomal Proteins RSM22 and L23” in PLoS One online on October 6, 2022.
A team led by Mary Ann Comunale, EdD, MS, is a recipient of the Phase 1 LymeX Diagnostic Prize sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Steve & Alexandra Cohen Foundation. Read more.
The only conference dedicated to convergent research in translational immunology and engineering. Our mission is to bring together researchers and leaders from academia, industry, medicine, and government, and to leverage diversity in background, ideas, perspectives, expertise, and approaches, to advance understanding, modulation, and engineering of the immune system for the betterment of human health.
Please note, registration closes Friday, December 2, 2022. Learn more.
Tower Health Research Day
Benjamin Haslund-Gourley won 1st place at the Tower Health Research Day for his talk titled: "Characterizing Aberrant N-Glycosylation During Acute Lyme Disease." His abstract was selected for 1 of 5 talks out of 97 entries. Ben is a third-year MD/PhD student in the lab of Dr. Comunale, Department of Microbiology and Immunology.
Neil Spector Humanitarian Award
Kayla Socarras, PhD candidate in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, is the 2022 recipient of the Neil Spector Humanitarian Award presented at the International Lyme and Associated Disease Society (ILADS) conference held in Orlando Florida. Kayla has attended the conference since 2015. She presented posters in 2016-2018 and in 2021 and was a speaker in 2019, 2020 and 2022. This year her presentation was titled "Construction of a Dual Borrelia/Borreliella Genera Pangenome for Diagnostics and Therapeutics."
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