Infectious Diseases

Dr. Reza Nassiri is Associate Dean of Global Health; Director of Institute of International Health; Professor of Clinical Pharmacology, Professor of Family and Community Medicine, and lecturer in Global Health, Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine at Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine. His research interests focuses on Clinical Pharmacology of HIV/AIDS & TB, prevention and control of infectious diseases, neglected tropical diseases, community health, global health, and socio-ethical determinants of health.

HIV/AIDS research

Dr. Angel Simeon Galabov is a professor of virology in The Stephan Angeloff Institute of Microbiology, Sofia, Bulgaria. He completed his Ph.D. at Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and M.D at Higher Medical School, Sofia, Bulgaria. He held many positions in his carrier. He is Regular Member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and is a member of several other Scientific Organizations. He has 40 patent inventions and 235 scientific refereed publications, including a monograph and chapters in books. He received award and honors; Awarded by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences by the Sign of Honor “Marin Drinov” in 2009.

Dr. Angel Simeonov Galabov's research interests include Antiviral Substances, Biological response modifiers, Replication cycle of picorna, Papillomaviruses in cervical cancer etiology, Oncolytic parvoviruses, Population genetics, Genetic status of ancient Bulgarians (Proto-Bulgarians) and Thracians (mtDNA analysis of anthropo-archeological skeletal remains).

Dr.Mario Stevenson, Ph.D. received his doctorate from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland in 1984. He performed postdoctoral studies at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and was a professor at that institution from 1993-1995. He conducted a research sabbatical at National Institute for Medical Research in London in 1990. In 1995, he joined the Program in Molecular Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. Dr. Stevenson was previously the David Freelander Chair of AIDS Research and Director of the Center for AIDS Research at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He is currently Professor of Medicine and Chief of Infectious Diseases at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Dr. Stevenson’s research is aimed at uncovering the functions of viral accessory genes, mechanisms of viral persistence and immunopathogenicity as well as cellular factors influencing virus-host cell interplay.”

Infectious Diseases

Dr.Karl Weiss Chief,Division of Infectious Diseases) SMBD-JEWISH GENERAL HOSPITAL- Professor of Medicine, McGill University Department of Medicine Division of Medical Microbiology

•Investigation of infections in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease •Epidemiological study of the bacterial resistance of respiratory pathogens in Quebec • Molecular analysis of the resistance of S. pneumoniae to macrolides and fluoroquinolones • Clinical Implications of Bacterial Resistance • Clinical trials in respiratory infections • Clostridium difficile infections

Dr.Stef Stienstra Works internationally for several medical and biotech companies as scientific advisory board member and is also an active reserve-officer of the Royal Dutch Navy in his rank as Commander (OF4). For the Dutch Armed Forces he is CBRNe specialist with focus on (micro)biological and chemical threats and medical- and environmental functional specialist within the 1st CMI (Civil Military Interaction) Battalion of the Dutch Armed Forces. For Expertise France he is now managing an EU CBRN CoE public health project in West Africa. In his civilian position he is at this moment developing with MT-Derm in Berlin (Germany) a novel interdermal vaccination technology as well as a new therapy for cutaneous leishmaniasis for which he has won a Canadian ‘Grand Challenge’ grant. With Hemanua in Dublin (Ireland) he has developed an innovative blood separation unit, which is also suitable to produce convalescent plasma for Ebola Virus Disese therapy. He has finished both his studies in Medicine and in Biochemistry in The Netherlands with a doctorate and has extensive practical experience in cell biology, immuno-haematology, infectous diseaases, biodefense and transfusion medicine. His natural business acumen and negotiation competence helps to initiate new successful businesses, often generated from unexpected combinations of technologies.

Ebola

Dr.Phillip Klebba received his doctorate in Biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, working with the discoverer of siderophores, Dr. Joe . Neilands. He performed post-doctoral study with Drs. Leon Rosenberg at Stanford University and Hiroshi Nikaido at UC Berkeley, and was a visiting professor with Drs Maurice Hofnung, Institut Pasteur, Alain Charbit, Institut Necker, and Ron Kaback, UCLA. Dr. Klebba is Head of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Kansas State University. His research interests focus on biophysical approaches to problems in membrane transport, especially iron acquisition by bacteria.

My scientific interests focus on the mechanisms of iron acquisition pro‐ and eukaryotic cells, including transformed cells. This goal involved different processes in Gram‐negative bacteria, Gram‐positive bacteria, and most recently cancer cells. Iron is essential for cellular metabolism in both bacteria and animals, and consequently it is a virulence determinant in regard to bacterial pathogenesis. E. coli and its Gram‐negative relatives (e.g., Salmonella, Shigella, Vibrio, Neisseria, Yersinia, Klebsiella, Pseudomonas, etc) secrete small molecules called siderophores (Gr; iron‐bearer) that chelate iron in the environment. They then capture these ferric complexes with receptor proteins in their outer membrane (OM). Our findings defined the mechanism by which the E. coli OM protein FepA recognizes and transports the siderophore ferric enterobactin (FeEnt). Experiments with this system spanned many aspects of prokaryotic membrane biochemistry, including protein structure and function to produce selective permeability, the immunology and immunochemistry of bacterial cell surfaces, and the relationship of bacterial iron acquisition to infectious disease. We immunologically characterized FepA, used antibodies to predict its porin‐like structure, showed that it contains a large channel through which iron enter the cell, and spectroscopically characterized the transport process. Our recent research was biophysical and more mechanistic, as we studied the transport actions of FepA and its accessory protein TonB, using electron spin resonance and fluorescence spectroscopic approaches. Our understanding of Gram‐negative bacterial iron transport led to high‐throughput screening methods to identify compounds in chemical libraries that block bacterial iron uptake, and thereby thwart pathogenesis. Our accomplishments include definition of the mechanism by which OM transporters accumulate iron against its concentration gradient, which requires energy and therefore falls into the category of active transport. They also require the actions of the additional cell envelope protein TonB, and are therefore “TonB‐dependent.” Toward understanding this process I spent a year with Ron Kaback at UCLA studying the lactose permease, LacY. Our recent findings finally connected these two aspects of OM transport in a comprehensive mechanism. In the Rotational Surveillance and Energy Transfer (ROSET) model TonB undergoes energy‐dependent motion (rotation) that transfers mechanical force to the OM. FepA uses this mechanical energy to undergo changes in structure that internalize FeEnt. By biophysical analyses in vivo we showed that internal motion in FepA controls transport through its pore, and TonB‐derived energy transfer underlies structural rearrangements in FepA. The results portray OM iron transporters as high‐affinity, dynamic receptors that actively capture iron and internalize it. After a sabbatical with Professor Alain Charbit at Institut Necker in Paris in 2002‐3, we expanded our research to consider the ability of the Gram‐positive organism Listeria monocytogenes to acquire iron. We discovered heme and hemoglobin binding proteins in the listerial cell wall that are distinct from the iron transporters of Gram‐negative cells, and explained their internalization of iron into the cytoplasm. Heme/ hemoglobin acquisition systems are crucial to the infectivity of Gram‐positive bacteria, that besides L. monocytogenes include Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, Bacillus and more. These bacteria all use nearly identical systems to bind hemoglobin, extract its heme and then transport the iron porphyrin to support their growth in human and animal hosts. Our primary research aim is to use his biochemical knowledge of their mechanisms to generate therapeutic agents (i.e., antibiotics) or immunological reagents (monoclonal antibodies) that block heme acquisition and thereby combat Gram‐positive bacterial pathogenesis.

Dr.Catherine Mullié obtained a PhD in Microbiology and a PharmD at the University of Lille, France, in 1999. After a post-doc year at the Faculté de Medicine in Amiens (Laboratoire d’Immunologie, INSERM-EMI 0351), she was appointed as assistant professor at the Faculté de Pharmacie in Amiens in 2000 and joined the LG-2A (Laboratoire de Glycochimie des Antimicrobiens et des Agroressources, UMR 7378 CNRS) in 2008. She has been a member of the French Society for Microbiology since 2000. Her research is focused on the development of new antimicrobial and antimalarial drugs, with a special interest in efflux-mediated antibiotic resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter baumannii. She currently heads the French part of a bilateral project funded by France and Algeria (Partenariat Hubert Curien Tassili) on this topic.

development of new antimicrobial and antimalarial drugs, with a special interest in efflux-mediated antibiotic resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter baumannii