Theodore White, PhD

Researchers at the UMKC School of Biological Sciences, working with investigators at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass., have sequenced the complete genomes for five separate fungi in the dermatophyte group, which cause a variety of fungal infections, including athlete’s foot.

The work at UMKC was performed in the lab of Theodore White, Ph.D., Interim Dean and Marion Merrell Dow Professor of Biological Sciences. Dr. White worked closely with Diego Martinez, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Associate, and Christina Cuomo, Ph.D., Group Leader of the Fungal Genome Sequencing and Analysis Group in the Genome Sequencing and Analysis Program at the Broad Institute. The work is published in the Sept. 4 issue of mBio, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. Click here for the article.

While fungal infections such as athlete’s foot may seem inconsequential, the research uncovered important information about how fungi interact with the human immune system, paving the way for eventual new therapies for treating far more serious diseases.

“These fungi are responsible for some of the most common fungal infections in the world, such as athlete’s foot, jock itch, ringworm and various infections of the nails and scalp,” Dr. White said. “In the U.S. and other developed countries, the most common of these infections is athlete’s foot, while in developing countries, scalp and body infections are more common.”

In analyzing the genome sequences of these fungi, Dr. Martinez and his colleagues discovered important new information on the mechanisms behind the infections and how some fungi are seemingly able to “hide” from the human body’s immune system.

“One of the most significant things we discovered is that there is a unique relationship between the fungus and the body’s immune system, which doesn’t appear to be able to eliminate the fungus,” Dr. White said. “We found a set of molecules that may actually serve to mask the fungal disease from our immune system.”

The genomic information produced by the investigators at UMKC and the Broad Institute may hold the keys to discovering the mechanisms that drive that “masking” effect, Dr. White added, paving the way for researchers to study methods for “unmasking” the disease, thus enabling the immune system to attack it.

“We have also been able to identify some unique toxins, and enzymes responsible for helping the fungus grow on the skin, all of which could be used in drug and vaccine development.” Dr. White said. “Our genome sequences will provide a strong foundation for future work in understanding how dermatophytes interact with the human body and cause disease.”

Diane Harper, MD

Diane Harper, M.D., joined representatives from the World Health Organization in a presentation August 29 in Montreal for the World Cancer Congress – Union for International Cancer Control, which represents the largest network dedicated to global cancer control.

Dr. Harper, Professor of Medicine in the UMKC Departments of Community and Family Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Biomedical and Health Informatics, spoke on the issue of global cervical cancer control with Andreas Ullrich, Medical Officer for Cancer Control at the WHO department of Chronic Diseases and Health Promotion in Geneva, Switzerland.

“Cervical cancer is the greatest cancer killer of women globally,” Dr. Harper said. “Specifically, 80 percent of cervical cancer deaths are in the developing countries where the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization are instrumental in documenting and sponsoring guidelines for improvement of women’s health.”

Dr. Harper’s presentation with the WHO team covered the topic of ethical and humanitarian communication about options for cervical cancer control that include screening as well as HPV vaccination options.

The four-day World Cancer Congress includes partners such as the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health, an NGO founded to bring reproductive technology to all women.

Nelson Sabates, MD

Researchers in the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine have received a four-year challenge grant of $220,000 from Research to Prevent Blindness, the leading voluntary health organization supporting eye research directed at the prevention, treatment or eradication of all diseases that threaten vision. The research will be directed by Nelson Sabates, M.D., Chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology and Director of the Vision Research Center at UMKC.

The research being conducted by Dr. Sabates and his colleagues is focused on two goals: 1) understanding the vision process at a cellular level and what happens when components at that level do not work correctly (such as in a disease process); and 2) making strides in treatments at the clinical level to save or improve patients’ vision.

UMKC’s vision researchers are well known for their studies on basic retinal cell biology and pharmacology, ophthalmic drug delivery and drug development for retinal diseases.

“Our researchers are not only investigating new promising medicines, but also new diagnostic and surgical techniques,” Dr. Sabates said. “With support like this grant from RPB, we hope to expand on our goals and develop a link that translates our basic and translational research to new clinical breakthroughs.”

Since it was founded in 1960, RPB has channeled hundreds of millions of dollars to medical institutions throughout the United States for research into all blinding eye diseases. For information on RPB, RPB-funded research, eye disorders and the RPB Grants Program, go to www.rbusa.org.

Mark Brodwin

UMKC astrophysicist Mark Brodwin, Ph.D., is part of a team of astronomers that have found an extraordinary galaxy cluster, one of the largest objects in the universe, that is breaking several important cosmic records. Observations of the Phoenix cluster with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, the National Science Foundation’s South Pole Telescope, and eight other world-class observatories may force astronomers to rethink how these colossal structures and the galaxies that inhabit them evolve. The research team’s observations appear in the Aug. 16 issue of Nature.

Stars are forming in the Phoenix cluster at the highest rate ever observed for the middle of a galaxy cluster. The object also is the most powerful producer of X-rays of any known cluster and among the most massive. The data also suggest the rate of hot gas cooling in the central regions of the cluster is the largest ever observed.

The Phoenix cluster is located about 5.7 billion light years from Earth. It is named not only for the constellation in which it is located, but also for its remarkable properties.  Click here to read the full NASA news release.

Jeffrey Gorski

Working with colleagues in Switzerland, University of Missouri-Kansas City Professor Jeffrey Gorski, PhD., has developed a “high-pressure freezing” method for preserving calcium and phosphorus in biological specimens. As a result, researchers will get a clearer picture of how bone tissue processes these vital elements and incorporates them into bone structure.

Traditional methods for preparing bone tissue samples for electron microscopy and electron spectroscopic imaging use water, which results in the loss of much of these minerals in the samples. The new method will enhance investigators’ ability to visualize the elements using non-aqueous (without water) electron microscopy and electron spectroscopic imaging methods. The results of the research were recently published in the Leica research magazine reSolution, as well as the research journal Cells Tissues Organs.

“Since both calcium and phosphorus – usually present as phosphate – are charged and small in size, they are easily lost in biological specimens that are conventionally processed using water,” said Dr. Gorski, who is a member of the Bone Biology Research program at the School of Dentistry.

The non-aqueous, high-pressure freezing method developed by Dr. Gorski and his colleagues is instantaneous and avoids the formation of ice crystals within the specimens, which can disrupt much of the fine cellular and extracellular morphological details. Using this method, the researchers are able to section the specimens without the losses that can result from exposure to water.

“All together, this new combined approach allows us to preserve a large part of the calcium and phosphorus so we can follow the process of how bone cells produce and crystallize these elements into hydroxyapatite (bone mineral),” he said.  “In particular, we are focusing on the time immediately prior to the nucleation of these crystals where the calcium and phosphorus atoms are more mobile and not locked into crystalline complexes yet.  How this happens is still in dispute and we hope our method will allow us to follow this process in a way not possible up to now.”

Lynda Bonewald

The University of Missouri-Kansas City has received a five-year, $8.3 million grant from the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, to study the relationship between osteoporosis (loss of bone density) and sarcopenia (loss of muscle mass) as people age. The research will be led by Lynda Bonewald, Ph.D., Curators’ Professor and director of the Bone Biology research program at the School of Dentistry, and conducted by a multidisciplinary team of investigators from UMKC’s Bone Biology and Muscle Biology research groups, part of the university’s Center of Excellence in Dental and Musculoskeletal Tissues.

“Osteoporosis and sarcopenia are major clinical problems in the nation’s aging population,” said Dr. Bonewald. “In many patients, these two conditions occur concurrently, posing serious health threats for the elderly — physical instability, susceptibility to falls and consequently to fracture, morbidity, and premature death.”

The UMKC research will focus on “endocrine crosstalk,” or how bone and muscle cells biochemically communicate with each other in health and disease. While current dogma assumes that the muscle-bone relationship is driven purely by mechanical factors, the UMKC investigators propose that bone can act, in effect, as an “endocrine organ” to control muscle physiology and disease. A reciprocal relationship may also exist between muscle and bone. Therefore, disease in either organ may have negative repercussions on the reciprocal organ through systemic endocrine factors. Dr. Bonewald believes this new line of research could potentially lead to the discovery of new therapeutic interventions for the prevention and treatment of bone and muscle diseases.

Click here to read the entire UMKC News Release.

L. Randall Wray

The Institute for New Economic Thinking has awarded a grant to UMKC Economics Professor L. Randall Wray, who will study “Financing Innovation: An Application of a Keynes-Schumpeter-Minsky Synthesis.”  Wray will collaborate on the project with Mariana Mazzucato, of the University of Sussex in the U.K., to integrate two research paradigms that have strong policy relevance in understanding the degree to which financial markets can be reformed in order to nurture value creation and ‘capital development’, rather than value extraction, and destruction.

The first one might be called the Keynes-Minsky vision that puts effective demand front and center of economic analysis, and the second is the Schumpeter-Minsky vision that places innovation at the center of competition theory, rather than relegated to the periphery of imperfect competition. The project will bring the two visions together to provide rigorous analysis of competition in the financial sphere and how it interacts with competition in the industrial sphere. The grant will also support the work of several Interdisciplinary PhD students in the UMKC Economics Department.

The researchers believe that a new framework will help provide a better understanding of the difference between creative destruction and destructive creation, and its applicability to new periods of economic growth, such as that which will hopefully result from the green technology revolution.

Prof. Wray is a regular contributor to economics and mainstream publications and a frequent speaker and presenter at meetings and conferences around the world. This fall, he has been invited by the Central Bank of Argentina to deliver the plenary lecture at its Annual Money and Banking Conference.

Researchers at UMKC’s SCE will collaborate with a number of high-profile institutions to research and invent technologies that will enable more energy-efficient networks. Without interventions like this one, internet and telecommunications energy usage is expected to grow to 10 percent of total global energy consumption by 2020. The goal is to demonstrate the new technology by 2015.

“The UMKC School of Computing and Engineering is a nationally-recognized research center with a longstanding commitment to environmental sustainability. We’re looking forward to working with our research partner in GreenTouch to make substantial reductions in energy consumption,” said Kevin Truman, dean of the school.

The not-for-profit consortium joins together independent think tanks, laboratories such as Bell Laboratories, and colleges including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University and the Universities of Rochester and Maryland.

UMKC’s SCE is located in, and contributes to, one of the nation’s largest engineering communities. It is Kansas City’s only university with ABET-accredited engineering, computer science and information technology degree programs. Over the past four years, research funding has tripled to $10M, and the SCE’s enrollment has grown by 50 percent to 1,100 students. The program is expected to grow to 1,500 by 2014.

This collaboration is the latest of the SCE’s many distinguished partnerships and achievements. The SCE’s internationally-recognized faculty are involved in research partnerships with IBM and Intel, and SCE computer networking research has been funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation.

“While there are several world-class professional collections in the U.S., like the collection we house here at UMKC, most collections in the U.S. are small and do not have long-term strategies for survival,” said Kevin McCluskey, Ph.D., Research Professor, curator of the fungal center and principal investigator for the NSF grant. “The network supported by this grant will ensure that smaller collections benefit from expertise available at larger living microbe collections.”

Along with UMKC’s fungal center, other notable collections represented in the network include the Pfaff Yeast Collection at the University of California-Davis and the National Marine Phytoplankton Collection at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine. Joining Professor McCluskey are co-principal investigators A. Rick Bennett, Head, Department of Plant Pathology, University of Arkansas, and Seogchan Kang of the Department of Plant Pathology, Pennsylvania State University.

The United States Culture Collection Network will hold numerous workshops teaching best practices for managing, preserving, and distributing bacteria, fungi, and other microscopic organisms in the context of formal culture collections. Biosecurity and regulatory issues will also be emphasized at workshops. Additional goals of the network include re-establishing a professional society of culture collection researchers in the U.S., developing internet based collection management tools, and fostering communication between U.S. collections, foreign collections, and international collection networks.

“Collections of living microbes assure that current, as well as past, research and innovation are available to future generations of scientists,” said McCluskey, who also serves on the Executive Board of the World Federation for Culture Collections. “Biological materials which are made available via well-managed collections represent the foundation of the modern biotechnology industry.”

Materials in culture collections impact fields as diverse as human health, agricultural productivity, biotechnology, and bio-diversity research.

Lawrence Dreyfus

Dr. Lawrence Dreyfus has been named to the position of Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, for a three-year term effective July 1, 2012.

Dr. Gail Hackett, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, announced Dreyfus’ appointment.

“Dr. Dreyfus is taking over one of the most important positions at this university at a pivotal moment, when research advancements are viewed as the cornerstone for the future of the greater Kansas City community. It is a big job, but I am confident that Lawrence Dreyfus is equal to the challenge,” Hackett said. Planning for a transition at the School of Biological Sciences is now underway, Hackett added.

Dreyfus, currently Dean of the School of Biological Sciences at UMKC, succeeds Dr. Lynda Bonewald. Dr. Bonewald will continue 25 percent time in a position as Vice Chancellor for Clinical/Translational Research, to assist the University in hiring a Director for the UMKC Center for Clinical and Translational Research and in getting that Center up and running. Once the Center is operational Dr. Bonewald plans to return to her full-time faculty position as Curators Professor and Lefkowitz Professor in Oral Biology, Director of the Mineralized Tissue Program in Oral Biology and Director of the UMKC Center of Excellence in Dental and Musculoskeletal Tissues.

Dreyfus thanked Hackett and Chancellor Leo E. Morton for their confidence in him, and Bonewald for her hard work as interim Vice Chancellor.

“We are Kansas City’s research university. Our charge is to be nationally and internationally recognized for our exceptional research and I am excited by that challenge and the opportunities that lie ahead,” Dreyfus said. “We are all very grateful to Dr. Bonewald for her willingness to temporarily put aside her research program to serve her university and her community, and I look forward to working closely with her during this transition period, and beyond.”

Dreyfus received a bachelor’s degree in Microbiology from Kansas University in 1971, a Master of Science in Microbiology from Michigan State University in 1978 and a Ph.D. in Microbiology from Kansas University in 1982. Following post-doctoral research training in microbial pathogenesis at the Oregon Health Sciences University, he joined the faculty at the University of Texas Medical Branch – Galveston. He came to UMKC in 1991, initially as an Associate Professor in the Division of Cell Biology and Biophysics, School of Biological Sciences and was promoted to the rank of Professor in 2001. He was appointed Dean of the School of Biological Sciences in 2003. During his tenure as Dean of the School of Biological Sciences he oversaw several changes within that School including a nearly three-fold growth in undergraduate enrollments and an expansion of their graduate programs. Over the years, Dean Dreyfus has served on several university-wide committees and served as chair of the Dean Search Committee for UMKC’s School of Computing and Engineering in 2005, and the Conservatory of Music and Dance in 2008.

Over the years Dreyfus has been responsible for attracting more than $2 million in total extramural research support for his research on the structure and function of microbial toxins and other initiatives. Dreyfus received the N.T. Veatch Award for Distinguished Research and Creativity in 1997; the UMKC Trustees Faculty Fellows Award for Outstanding Research in 1998; and the UMKC SHARES Award for Creative Research and Teaching in 2002. He has served on the NASA Life Sciences Grant Application Review Panel; the National Institutes of Health Division of Research Grants, Bacteriology and Mycology Study Section; the Genome Canada Program Project Review Panel; and the United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service Project Review Panel.

The vice chancellor for research and economic development oversees UMKC’s Office of Research Services and all UMKC research and economic development initiatives. The office provides proposal and budget development support to faculty and staff to identify and secure research grants and contracts; support for responsible management of funds awarded, consistent with university policy, requirements of funding sources, and federal regulations; compliance with federal, state, local and institutional regulatory practices; and maintains an Office of Technology Transfer to help UMKC researchers share their discoveries with the world.

The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development also oversees the Institute for Human Development, an applied research and training center for human services; and the UMKC Innovation Center, which partners with the university and the community to spark entrepreneurial efforts that translate research discoveries and innovations into profitable, job-creating businesses.