The National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID) is pleased to announce the five postdoctoral fellowship recipients for the 1996-97 season.

For the fourth time, NFID and Astra USA, Inc., have awarded two postdoctoral fellowships in infectious disease training and herpes virus research.

Keith R. Jerome, MD, PhD, will study the pathophysiology of Herpes simplex virus (HSV) infections.

"I will investigate the possibility that HSV prevents apoptosis, or programmed cell death, in infected cells," he said. "Since the immune system eliminates virally infected cells by inducing them to undergo apoptosis, prevention of apoptosis would give the virus a tremendous survival advantage," he added. He will attempt to learn which HSV genes mediate this effect, and what parts of the immune system are most affected.

"Ultimately, the knowledge gained from these studies may allow us to devise strategies to help the immune system re-establish its control over HSV infection," Dr. Jerome added.

Dr. Jerome received both his doctoral degrees from Duke University.

Thomas L. Meyer, MD, will study the early transcriptional events that occur when Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infects and immortalizes B lymphocytes. In addition to infectious mononucleosis, EBV is associated with a variety of malignancies, including Burkitt's lymphoma, nasopharyngeal carcinoma, Hodgkin's disease, and AIDS-associated lymphoma.

"The goal of this work is to eventually devise ways of manipulating protein expression in EBV-associated malignancies in order to allow the body's immune system to more effectively recognize and destroy the cancer cells," Dr. Meyer said.

Epstein-Barr virus nuclear antigens (EBVNA) are the first proteins expressed by EBV in B cell infection, and EBVNA proteins are essential for B cell immortalization by EBV. Dr. Meyer added, "I will investigate the role of cellular factors in regulating EBVNA expression."

Dr. Meyer received his medical degree from the University of Iowa School of Medicine.

With her award from the NFID-Eli Lilly Fellowship in Infectious Diseases, Upinder Singh, MD, will study Entamoeba histolytica, a protozoan parasite which causes amebic colitis and liver abscesses, mostly in developing countries. Surpassed only by malaria and schistosomiasis, it is the third leading cause of death from parasitic diseases worldwide.

"I am currently looking at the basic elements controlling transcription in this organism. Regulation of gene expression may be an important factor in the pathogenesis of this parasite," she said. "Novel regulatory elements have been identified in the core promoters of a number of protein encoding genes. The function of these sequences and identification of proteins which interact with these regions is underway," Dr. Singh added.

Dr. Singh is hopeful that the information gained by this research will increase our understanding of the intricacies of gene expression in this medically important parasite.

Dr. Singh is a fellow at the University of Virginia Health Sciences Center where she completed her residency. She received her medical degree from Ohio State University.

Between 1993 and 1995, there was a concomitant outbreak of vancomycin resistant enterococci (VRE) on the pediatric units of the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC). Both hospitals shared a common pediatric intensive care unit and pediatric personnel. Dr. McNeeley suggests, "The predominance of a single clone in both institutions and other epidemiological factors may indicate a common source of infection in the pediatric units of this large urban medical center associated with nosocomial transmission of the organism."

Dr. McNeeley will define the clinical and epidemiological characteristics of children from whom VRE was isolated, will genotype all isolates from these patients, and will determine whether a single or multiple clones of VRE were responsible for this outbreak. In addition, he will attempt to define the relationship between the clinical and epidemiologic characteristics of infected children and the genotypes of VRE isolated during their hospitalizations. With this information, he will compare it to the VRE data from MSKCC.

"We hope that this information will not only help us to trace the development of the outbreak of VRE on the pediatric services of these two institutions, but will also permit us to make recommendations for the control of the spread of such infections in the hospital setting," Dr. McNeeley added.

Dr. McNeeley is a fellow in pediatric infectious diseases and immunology at Cornell Medical Center-New York Hospital and received his medical degree from Tulane University School of Medicine.

Andrew W. Hing, MD, PhD, is the recipient of the NFID-John P. Utz/Janssen Pharmaceutica Fellowship in Medical Mycology. He will study amphotericin B-a widely used fungal agent.

Although this drug "remains the gold standard for treatment of life-threatening fungal infections, ...toxicity and problems with its delivery limits its usefulness," Dr. Hing said. Many attempts have been made to solve these problems, but there has been little clinical success. Dr. Hing believes that progress can not be made in this area until research is conducted on amphotericin B's basic structure and mechanism of action in a membrane environment.

To accomplish this, Dr. Hing will use the technique of solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance. "By the appropriate placement of stable isotope labels in the amphotericin B molecule and its derivatives, the orientation of membrane components can be determined by measurement of bond angles in oriented bilayers; and the distances between components can be determined by measurement of interactions between magnetic nuclei," he said. "With orientation and distance measurements, the intermolecular complex between amphotericin B, membrane sterols, and phospholipids can be determined to atomic resolution," Dr. Hing added.

From this data, Dr. Hing is hopeful that he will be able to draw conclusions about amphotericin B's mechanism of action. With this resulting data, he believes that a more potent, less toxic amphotericin analog could be designed.

Dr. Hing received both his doctoral degrees from the Washington University.