Chagas Disease: A Solvable Problem (largely) ignored

Monday, October 14, 2024 at 12 PM EST

Rick Tarleton, PhD
Regents' Professor and UGA Athletic Association Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences

Hybrid seminar in Hill 132 and via Zoom: https://upenn.zoom.us/j/91485597704

 

ABSTRACT:

Chagas disease has been described as “the most neglected of neglected diseases”.  True or not, it is certainly true that there are many misunderstood aspects of Trypanosoma cruzi infection and Chagas disease and there has been little apparent progress in reducing new infections or providing effective treatment for those already treated.  I will attempt in this seminar to present some of the data behind why I maintain that Chagas is a ‘solvable problem’, including what we have learned from and can continue to exploit in animals with infections that are naturally acquired in the U.S. (yes, a Chagas-endemic country).  I will touch on the advances in potential therapeutics and in the detection and monitoring of infections that should ultimately impact human disease.  And lastly, I hope to discuss the ‘less-solvable’ aspects of T. cruzi infection, including how immune control establishes and why this control is insufficient to resolve the infection (and why even the best vaccines will likely prove insufficient).

 

BIO:

Professor Rick Tarleton is a Regents’ Professor and UGA-Athletic Association Distinguished Research Chair in Biological Sciences at the University of Georgia, Athens, GA USA.  He was the Founding Director of the Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases at UGA, currently home to >25 labs working in the area of tropical parasitic diseases.  Prior to coming to UGA in 1984, Rick spent one year at the University of Rochester as a post-doctoral fellow.  Both his B.A. and Ph.D. degrees are from Wake Forest University, where he fell in love with Trypanosoma cruzi and immunology under the mentorship of Ray Kuhn. Since his undergraduate time, he has worked nearly exclusively in the area of Chagas disease, including studies of the mechanisms of immunity and disease in T. cruzi infection, and the development of diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines for T. cruzi. Among other highlights, his lab provided some of the seminal findings documenting parasite persistence (rather than autoimmunity) in the etiology of Chagas disease, insights into the function of CD8+ T cells in immune control of T. cruzi and multiple tools for the study of T. cruzi, including genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic datasets and most recently, adaptation of the CRISPR/Cas9 system for genome editing. Among current projects in his lab are attempts at a better general understanding of the host:parasite interface in T. cruzi infection, with a focus on how parasite biology impacts host responses, discovery of biomarkers of cure in human, non-human primate, canine and murine T. cruzi infection, and the development of improved regimens and discovery of new drugs for treating the infection.  Rick is the Founder and President of the Chagas Disease Foundation, former chair of the U.S. NIH Immunity and Host Defense Study Section, and founder and convener of the Chagas Drug Discovery Consortium.  Previous awards include the Burroughs Welcome Fund Scholar Award (1995) and the Lamar Dodd Outstanding Researcher Award, University of Georgia, 2012. Rick is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (2017) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2020).

 

WEBSITE:

https://ctegd.uga.edu/about/directory/rick-tarleton/