Dr. Boris Striepen, Professor of Pathobiology
at Penn Vet, received a $1.8-million, threeyear
grant in January from the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation to enable the development
of drugs for cryptosporidiosis, a diarrheal disease caused by
microscopic parasites. Additionally, last November, Striepen
was presented with the American Committee of Molecular,
Cellular and Immunoparasitology’s prestigious William
Trager Award for Basic Parasitology.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, cryptosporidiosis sickens approximately
750,000 people each year in the United States. Caused
by Cryptosporidium, a microscopic parasite that is typically
transmitted through contaminated water, the disease is the
second leading cause of severe diarrhea in small children.
Globally, diarrheal diseases claim the lives of more than
800,000 children under the age of five annually.
Striepen is a leader in the study of Cryptosporidium. Under
the grant, he and his team will use a variety of molecular
genetic approaches to support drug development efforts,
focusing on the identification and validation of therapeutic
targets to guide medicinal chemistry. The project will build
upon the team’s breakthrough in establishing techniques for
genetic manipulation of Cryptosporidium to produce parasites
suitable for drug testing in vitro and in vivo. Striepen will
seek to link drug candidates with their targets within the
parasite. Understanding how drugs work is very helpful to
further enhance their potency and to anticipate and avoid
unwanted toxicity and side effects.
“We will develop rigorous tests to establish whether
drug candidates truly act on the target they were designed
to,” Striepen said. “We will establish how the metabolism
of the parasite interacts with that of its human host cell
and assemble a catalog of those functions that are essential
to the survival of the parasite and thus good targets for
intervention.”
Last fall, Striepen received the William Trager Award at
the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene’s
Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland. Named in honor
of malaria research pioneer Dr. William Trager, the annual
award recognizes scientists who have made a fundamental
breakthrough in basic parasitology that allows for new areas
of investigation.
Striepen joined Penn Vet’s faculty in July 2017. His
research program is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the
Wellcome Trust.
“It is professors like Dr. Striepen who continue to
make Penn Vet a leader in biomedical research that has a
profound impact on human lives,” said Dr. Christopher
A. Hunter, the Mindy Halikman Heyer Distinguished
Professor of Pathobiology and Chairman of the Department
of Pathobiology at Penn Vet. “He is a highly innovative
scientist who is making significant contributions within the
microbiology community here at Penn.”