Major grant funds Pfiesteria research at COMB (NIEHS)

Major Grant Funds Pfiesteria Research at COMB

August 19, 1998 -- The National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has awarded a $6.3 million grant to the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute's Center of Marine Biotechnology (COMB), and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine to implement a major five-year Pfiesteria research program.

Donald N. Langenberg, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, says, "USM has brought the full force of its research capability to understand and combat the impact of Pfiesteria on Maryland's waters and its related industries. This new infusion of federal funding through the NIEHS grant will give USM researchers at COMB and at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in collaboration with their colleagues at Johns Hopkins the means to continue as leaders in the effort to solve this public health and environmental problem. This research will benefit the state of Maryland and the entire mid-Atlantic area."

In addition, the Maryland Department of the Environment is providing matching funds to COMB of almost $295,000. This is to supplement the federal award for developing COMB's core facility to grow toxic marine algae and use molecular tools to identify them. Both awards are especially significant coming at this time of year because of recent fish kills in North Carolina last month, leading to concern about possible recurrences of Pfiesteria outbreaks elsewhere along the East Coast including Maryland.

"COMB will have the key leadership role in this program," says Dr. Peter P. McCann, UMBI's new interim president. "In response to last year's outbreaks in Maryland, COMB took the initiative to bring scientists from diverse fields together to outline a research agenda. The NIEHS funding will enable further collaboration on interconnected projects."

At COMB the NIEHS grant will fund a group of projects on the biology of Pfiesteria. Neither plant nor animal, dinoflagellates are aquatic organisms, a natural part of marine ecosystems that generally are referred to under the broad heading of "algae." The studies will examine the nature of the species, life cycle, and mechanisms of toxin production. They are expected to provide methods to determine the relationships between the toxins and specific impairments in human learning and memory.

"We expect that our work in developing proper interventions will make an important contribution to the public health of Marylanders," says Dr. Yonathan Zohar, professor and director of COMB. "COMB will use DNA technology to create ways to monitor Pfiesteria in the environment and understand what causes it to become toxic. We are excited about applying our expertise to developing both diagnostics and preventive measures to help solve this problem."

Under the NIEHS grant, COMB projects will:

establish a core facility to culture, or grow, Pfiesteria species in the Chesapeake Bay that have been involved in fish kills and human health effects;
study the mechanisms underlying Pfiesteria toxicity and toxin production; and
develop DNA "fingerprint" tools to monitor, identify, and classify Pfiesteria species.

The NIEHS grant also includes two projects at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (SOM). These studies will focus on neuropsychology, in order to define the nature and extent of learning and memory impairments in affected persons, and on neurotoxicology, to examine responses to toxin preparations in tissue culture and animal models. Principal investigators for the overall program project are Dr. J. Glenn Morris, professor, SOM, and Dr. Yonathan Zohar, professor and director, COMB, University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute.

COMB's research will bring scientists who are studying Pfiesteria and Pfiesteria-like organisms nationwide closer to understanding the nature of the species. They will be able to identify conditions that cause it to become toxic as well as possible health reactions that may result from environmental exposure to affected waterways.

"Because of our mission and experience, we responded immediately when there were outbreaks of Pfiesteria in the Chesapeake Bay last summer," adds Zohar. "We mobilized our faculty, equipment and other resources to study the Maryland toxic dinoflagellates. Specifically, we collected samples of the microorganisms in the sites of the outbreaks, and we are currently culturing them in biosafety level 3 labs constructed specifically for this purpose."

The grant will allow COMB to expand the instrumental role it has taken already on research in this area. In addition, as part of the new funding, COMB will provide samples for further purification to the NIEHS Marine and Freshwater Biomedical Sciences Center at the University of Miami as well as other interested laboratories and scientists. These pure toxins will be used at the School of Medicine, University of Maryland, to understand molecular and cellular mechanisms of action at the level of the brain, and, at both COMB and the Miami Center, to develop analytical measures that can detect how much of the toxins are present in environmental and animal samples.

"The mechanisms by which the toxins act at the level of the brain cannot be understood until enough toxins are produced in the lab," Zohar says. "This is exactly what we will do here at COMB."