By: Ashton Davis
During our time together I learned of the importance of the Biocontainment Treatment Unit and that it is one of 10 units in the United States that is prepared to serve as a Regional Emerging and Special
Pathogens Treatment Center. The units do not work in silos, however, but work as a network to be prepared for future outbreaks. Dr. McLellan is especially positioned to lead this unit with boots on the ground experience in Sierra Leone and Guinea during the West African Ebola outbreak, and later the Democratic Republic of Congo.
During her time working with WHO in West Africa, the need for basic and clinical research to be implemented rapidly during outbreaks became apparent if such research is going to aid clinicians in the care of affected patients. Without strategies to immediately
initiate and conduct clinical research and disseminate the findings, results may only be published after an outbreak has already fizzled out. Dr. McLellan spoke of adaptive clinical protocols that WHO and partners have developed that can be applied
to multiple different diseases in countries and test multiple medical countermeasures to provide real time results in time to impact the same outbreak. Dr. McLellan and her colleagues in other Regional Treatment Units are working on developing such
platforms to support clinical research capacity during epidemics. With the Galveston National Laboratory and other scientists at UTMB, we are positioned well to contribute to these endeavors.
When discussing the topic of One Health and how work in emerging pathogens fits under that umbrella, she mentioned how One Health is really just a new way of thinking about what people have been doing all along but focusing on the relationships between
human health and that of the other living organisms around us. She first heard the term 10 years ago while at Tulane and went on to be an advisor for a One Health student group. Her work has led her to be a part of leadership for the West African Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases (WACEID). One of the aims of this group is to perform surveillance in humans and animals for known or unknown zoonotic pathogens, particularly viruses that may be causing human disease. They use a One Health approach with collaborators in West Africa
to perform meaningful research.
In the future, Dr. Susan McLellan not only wants to keep the Biocontainment Care Unit ready to provide excellent clinical care for persons affected by the most dangerous of pathogens, but to also promote research in clinical care that better
positions us for the next outbreak of an emerging infection. Under her continued leadership increased opportunities are on the horizon.