Newsletter Articles

Austin Weynand provides an insight into the various sessions offered at the UTMB International Symposium on One Health Research

Dr. Marc-Antoine de La Vega is a virologist and post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB). He has extensive expertise with high containment pathogens in both academic and field laboratory settings. In this interview, Dr. de La Vega described his research group’s efforts with global outbreak response and how international collaboration efforts continue to grow. He also elaborated on his personal involvement helping to pilot the World Health Organization’s (WHO) standardized guidelines for rapid response mobile laboratories (RRMLs).

Prions are unique infectious agents. A misfolded protein like PrP, which is found in a variety of cells in animals and plants, can induce other endogenous PrP proteins to misfold essentially infecting the endogenous protein into the misfolded conformation. This misfolding of one of our fundamental structures creates aggregates that result in neurological damage and eventually death. Dr. Erin Lee, a veterinarian at UTMB, has studied prions such as transmissible mink encephalopathy and is now collaborating with Texas Parks and Wildlife to address questions about another prion which is causing chronic wasting disease in Texas deer.

Our attention is often captivated by One Health news, from epidemics to environmental disasters around the globe. However, we rarely celebrate the successes and highlight the current challenges of integrating our disparate and siloed health communities, be they focused on human, animal or environmental health. Thus, in 2016, the One Health Commission launched One Health Day, an international campaign to engage us all.

A team of One Health researchers led by Professor Greg Gray of UTMB has received a 5-year U.S. Department of Agriculture grant to develop effective and cost-efficient methods for testing livestock and people on livestock farms for SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses.

Under a NIH funded grant this spring, five Mongolian scholars received three-months of One-Health-oriented research training at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) or Duke University. Two scholars learned virology methods at UTMB, and three scholars learned air pollution research techniques at Duke University. This training is part of a Fogarty International Center-supported GEOHealth Center in Mongolia.

Prof. Nyamdavaa Khurelbaatar, President of Mongolian National University of Medical Sciences in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, visited the University of Texas Medical Branch in May 2023 to meet prominent scholars and administrators. President Khurelbaatar has been working in Emerging Disease and One Health Research with Professor Greg Gray of UTMB for about 15 years. During his visit, President Khurelbaatar signed an Agreement of Cooperation with UTMB's President Mouton supporting the exchange of faculty and students between both universities and increasing collaborations in research.

UTMB researchers are planning a study that will investigate the environmental transmission mechanisms of a particularly concerning prion disease. Chronic Wasting Disease has only been reported in Texas cervid populations over the last decade. There are yet many unanswered questions about the capability of disease transmission within and between animal host species, and tangentially, crossover to humans. This One Health study is a collaborative effort between UTMB and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to gather an understanding of the transmission potential between two species, axis deer and white-tailed deer, that are found both captive and free ranging within the state’s borders.