Researchers work to prevent chlamydia

By Jesse Brown

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Chlamydia trachomatis, or Chlamydia, is the most common bacterial sexually transmitted disease reported not only in the United States, but worldwide.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1,030,911, Chlamydial infections were reported in the United States in 2006, though many cases go unreported.

Scott Hefty, professor of molecular bioscience, is working with a team of researchers to create the basis for an antibiotic to treat the disease. Hefty said the team hoped to discover how to prevent the growth of Chlamydial infections by understanding the basic functions of the disease.

“Our laboratory is focused on trying to disrupt the growth of the organism or identify specific steps that are important for this organism to grow,” Hefty said.

The research team consists of Hefty, two research technicians, three graduate students and one undergraduate student.

Kyle Kemege, Wichita graduate student, is working with the team to control the disease.

“We’re trying to figure out what makes it tick,” Kemege said. “If we know how it works, we know how to mess it up.”

Kemege said each student or technician was working on his or her own basic project as part of the overall research. Kemege is working on decoding a specific protein, called protein CT009, that regulates the function of the disease but is not entirely understood. He said even understanding such a basic part of the Chlamydial growth would make a difference in the team’s research.

“This protein, in some ways, is similar to other proteins that are major regulators in other organisms,” Kemege said.

He also said the team’s research focused on trying to understand this unknown protein and the role it ha in the developmental cycle of Chlamydia.

Zane Jaafar, is one of the research technicians and is taking a year off before graduate school to participate in this research. As a former KU student, Jaafar has worked with the researchers in the past.

Jaafar is taking a broader approach to the problem and is trying understand a large number of the proteins around the disease.

Although Hefty said understanding the basic functions to disrupt Chlamydial growth was the laboratory’s short-term goal, he said the long-term goal was to develop the basis for an antibiotic to effectively treat Chlamydia within five to 10 years.

Hefty said that there were antibiotics such as doxycycline, which slows the growth of bacteria, used to cure the disease, but that problems were arising as people became more resistant to the antibiotic.

“Bacteria will eventually gain resistance to those antibiotics we use,” Hefty said. “In Chlamydia, there already has been resistance that has been demonstrated against doxycycline, so we need new antibiotics.”

Chlamydia is known as a “silent” disease because about 75 percent of women and 50 percent of men show no symptoms, according to the CDC. If these infections continue to go untreated, serious reproductive and other health problems can occur. The CDC Web site has more information on Chlamydia and its health risks.

“It’s really interesting to work on a micro-organism that has such a significant impact on public health worldwide,” Kemege said. “I feel like it has a major impact on the world and health.”

— — Edited by Anna Kathagnarath

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