bacteria

A Year of Honors for IRP Cancer Researchers

Four NIH Scientists Received Prestigious Recognition in 2022

clockwise from top-left: Dr. Michael Lichten, Dr. Susan Lea, Dr. Kandice Tanner, and Dr. Deborah Morrison

The complexities of cancer, which is actually a collection of many diseases, has made conquering it an enormous challenge. Fortunately, researchers in the NIH Intramural Research Program are up to the task. This year, four IRP investigators in NIH’s National Cancer Institute (NCI) have been recognized for their groundbreaking contributions to answering fundamental questions about the disease and the immune system’s response to similar threats.

Postdoc Profile: Eavesdropping On Bacterial Banter

Dr. Tiffany Zarrella Examines Communication Between Bacteria to Combat Persistent Infections

Dr. Tiffany Zarella

Facebook’s nearly 3 billion users may seem like a huge social network, but it pales in comparison to the conversations among the trillions of microbes that live inside a single human body. Few people know this better than IRP postdoctoral fellow Tiffany Zarrella, Ph.D., who spends her days eavesdropping on the messages bacteria send to one another to improve treatment for stubborn infections.

Dr. Zarrella was drawn to the bacterial world in microbiology lab courses while earning a biochemistry degree at Syracuse University in New York. After graduation, she obtained a research technician position at Albany Medical College, where she worked on projects centered around infectious bacteria and how they respond to their environments. She continued this thread of research in graduate school, moving on to a new study to discover how Streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria, which often cause ear infections and pneumonia, use a particular signaling molecule to resist antibiotic treatments and evade vaccines.

Teaming Up to Tackle Engineering Challenges

Innovation Awards Accelerate Development of New Research Techniques

scientist working with a robotic arm

Scientists spend years, even decades, intensely studying a specific disease or biological system, an approach that yields unrivaled knowledge. However, many important scientific questions require a deep understanding of several subjects. As a result, the IRP has numerous programs dedicated to encouraging scientists with different areas of expertise to work together.

One such program is the NIH Director’s Challenge Innovation Awards, which funds innovative, high-impact projects that require the cooperation of researchers in more than one of NIH’s Institutes and Centers. This year, the program selected six promising proposals with one foot in the disciplines of biology and medicine and another in engineering or the physical sciences.

Beat the Heat With Some NIH History

Measuring and Manipulating Temperature Is Key to IRP Research

Many parts of the country were hit by record-breaking heat this summer. Controlling temperature is not only important for staying healthy, but it's also crucial for many types of research. Grab your water bottle and sit down in a shady spot to take a look at some photos from the Office of NIH History & Stetten Museum on the theme of hot and cold.

nurse holding thermometer

Poster Sessions Celebrate Summer Science

Annual Event Brandishes the Next Generation of Clinicians and Scientists

Andrés Gorbea, Sarah Bengtson, Lietsel Jones, Michaella Bono, and Joseph Grech

A year after hundreds of high school, undergraduate, and graduate students were only able to participate from afar in NIH’s 2021 Summer Internship Program, IRP researchers were excited to welcome some of the program’s 2022 participants to campus. Regardless of whether they were working in the lab or remotely, these budding scientists received a full-time immersion into the world of IRP science and, surely, learned a great deal from the mentorship of NIH’s many world-renowned researchers.

To celebrate the interns’ hard work, NIH’s Summer Poster Days on August 3 and 4 gave more than 600 of them the opportunity to virtually present posters explaining their projects. With so many bright young men and women displaying the fruits of their scientific labors, it was difficult to select just a handful to highlight in this blog. Read on to learn about how five of NIH’s 2022 summer interns shed light on topics from the microbes living on our skin to the blood-clotting platelets that flow through our veins.

A Computational Approach to Curbing Chemotherapy’s Side Effects

Study Identifies Compounds That Could Aid Body’s Removal of Toxic Cancer Drugs

computer binary code

When it comes to cancer, the treatment can sometimes feel worse than the disease. Not only do chemotherapy drugs cause grueling side effects, but certain products made by otherwise benign bacteria living in our digestive system can interfere with the body’s ability to get rid of those toxic chemicals. A new IRP study used a cutting-edge computational approach to help identify compounds that inhibit one of those meddling bacterial molecules, which could eventually lead to the creation of medications that reduce some of chemotherapy’s side effects.

Reducing Stress Boosts Efficiency of Bacterial Factories

Unconventional Genetic Strategy Could Enhance Production of Medical Treatments

E. coli bacteria

We all have bad days on the job — your colleague keeps bugging you, your boss yelled at you for an innocent mistake, and you skipped lunch because you have 10 different deadlines coming up. Understandably, many people find it much harder to get their work done under such stressful circumstances. Microbes that produce chemicals for medicine and scientific research experience similar struggles, but a recent IRP study has found that short-circuiting their stress response makes them far more efficient at that task.

IRP Grad Students Present a Scientific Smorgasbord

Virtual Symposium Showcases Scientists-in-Training

IRP graduate students Khalin Nisbett, Julia Gross, Luis Rivera García, and Temesgen Andargie

Even in the midst of a global pandemic, life at NIH goes on. IRP researchers continue to run experiments, publish scientific papers, and train the next generation of scientists, including the many graduate students performing research in IRP labs through the Graduate Partnership Program. On February 17 and 18, more than 100 of these scientists-in-training presented their work virtually at the NIH’s 17th annual Graduate Student Research Symposium. Like last year’s entirely online Postbac Poster Day, the event overcame the constraints of COVID-19 precautions to showcase a broad range of research, including several studies focused on the novel coronavirus.

Teaching an Old Vaccine New Tricks to Thwart Tuberculosis

The IRP’s Mario Roederer and Robert Seder Discuss the Science Behind the Headlines

Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria, the cause of tuberculosis

Some say that if something’s not broken, then don’t fix it, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement. At least, those were the thoughts of IRP senior investigators Mario Roederer, Ph.D., and Robert Alan Seder, M.D., who recently found that the century-old tuberculosis (TB) vaccine is far more effective when administered via injection into a vein (IV) rather than into the skin, which has long been the standard way it is given. This major breakthrough received extensive media coverage, including a story in the New York Times. We went Behind the Headlines to get the inside scoop on this potentially life-saving discovery.

Mouth Microbes Turn Treasonous in Gum Disease

Four Questions with Dr. Niki Moutsopoulos

bacteria

Our mouths are teeming with bacteria, a microbial ecosystem known as the oral microbiome. While these microbes are typically benign, under certain circumstances they can turn harmful and contribute to oral diseases such as periodontitis, a form of chronic gum disease characterized by microbe-driven inflammation of the soft tissues and bone that support our teeth. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), roughly 65 million Americans aged 30 or older have some degree of periodontitis. In its early stage, known as gingivitis, the gums become swollen and red due to inflammation, which is the body’s natural response to the presence of bacteria. If the condition worsens, it can lead to loose teeth and, eventually, bone or tooth loss.

NIH senior investigator Niki Moutsopoulos, Ph.D., head of the Oral Immunity and Inflammation Section at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), studies periodontitis and aims to understand the immune system’s role in driving this destruction. In a 2018 study, she and her team of IRP researchers and outside collaborators discovered that an abnormal and unhealthy population of microbes in the mouth causes specialized immune cells, known as T helper 17 (Th17) cells, to trigger inflammation and destroy tissue, leading to periodontitis.