Dr. Melanie Ott

Scientists at Gladstone and UCSF form two new research institutes

/ Yimy Villa / Leave a comment
Dr. Melanie Ott (left) and Dr. Alexander Marson (right)
Image Credit: Gladstone Institutes

In a previous blog post, we talked about how scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have shifted their current operations towards helping with the current coronavirus pandemic. Now scientists at Gladstone and U.C. San Francisco have formed two new research institutes to broaden its impact on unsolved diseases such as COVID-19.

One of these institutes is the Gladstone Institute of Virology and will be lead by Dr. Melanie Ott. The immediate focus of this newly formed institution will be the current coronavirus pandemic. Additionally, it will focus on searching for new therapies against future infectious diseases. The Gladstone Institute of Virology will focus on how viruses interact with human cells to cause disease and how to intervene in that process. Dr. Ott’s goal is to identify pathways these viruses use to infect human cells as a way to develop innovative treatments.

In a press release from Gladstone Institutes, Dr. Ott talks about the goal of her work in more detail.

“Contrary to the current strategy of combining several drugs to treat one virus, we want to develop one drug against multiple viruses. As antibiotic resistance becomes an increasingly urgent problem, we will also delve into how we can use viruses as therapeutics, which involves using viruses against themselves or to fight bacteria.”

The second institute is a collaboration between UCSF and Gladstone Institutes and is called the Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology. It will be lead by Dr. Alexander Marson and will combine the study of genomics and immunology to develop new therapies. One of the primary goals will be to understand the role that genetics play in human immune cells. By manipulating these cells, the immune system could potentially be altered to treat cancer, infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, and even neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s.

In the same press release from Gladstone Institutes, Dr. Marson discusses the importance these collaborations hold for pushing scientific innovation.

“These rapidly advancing fields are starting to converge in ways that are too big for any single lab to take on. The impetus to start a new institute was the realization that we need to create an ecosystem to bring together people with different perspectives to think about transformative opportunities for how patients can be treated in the future.”

Gladstone scientists respond to coronavirus pandemic

/ Yimy Villa / 1 Comment

In these uncertain times, we often look to our top scientists for answers as well as potential solutions. But where does one begin to try and solve a problem of this magnitude? The first logical step is building on the supplies currently available, the work already accomplished, and the knowledge acquired.

This is the approach that the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco is taking. Various scientists at this institution have shifted their current operations towards helping with the current coronavirus pandemic. These efforts have focused on helping with diagnostics, treatment, and prevention of COVID-19.

Diagnostics

Dr. Jennifer Doudna and Dr. Melanie Ott are collaborating in order to develop an effective method to rapidly diagnose those with COVID-19. Dr. Doudna’s work has focused on CRISPR technology, which we have talked about in detail in a previous blog post, while Dr. Ott has focused on studying viruses. By combining their expertises, these two scientists hope to develop a diagnostic tool capable of delivering rapid results and usable in areas such as airports, ports of entry, and remote communities.

Treatment

Dr. Nevan Krogan has discovered all of the human host cell proteins that COVID-19 interacts with to hijack the cell’s machinery. These proteins serve as new targets for potential drug therapies.

Since the high fatality rate of the virus is driven by lung and heart failure, Dr. Ott, Dr. Bruce Conklin, and Dr. Todd McDevitt will test effects of the virus and potential drug therapies in human lung organoids and human heart cells, both developed from human stem cells.

Dr. Warner Greene, who also focuses on the study of viruses, is screening a variety of FDA-approved drugs to identify those that could be rapidly repurposed as a treatment for COVID-19 patients or even as a preventive for high risk-groups.

Prevention

Dr. Leor Weinberger has developed a new approach to fight the spread of viruses. It is called therapeutic interfering particles (TIPs) and could be an alternative to a vaccine. TIPs are defective virus fragments that mimic the virus but are not able to replicate. They combat the virus by hijacking the cell machinery to transform virus-infected cells into factories that produce TIPS, amplifying the effect of TIPs in stopping the spread of virus. TIPs targeting COVID-19 would transmit along the same paths as the virus itself, and thus provide protection to even the most vulnerable populations.

You can read more about these groundbreaking projects in the news release linked here.