{"id":689,"date":"2010-04-20T13:34:06","date_gmt":"2010-04-20T17:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/busm-news\/?p=689"},"modified":"2010-04-20T13:34:06","modified_gmt":"2010-04-20T17:34:06","slug":"busms-goldstein-wins-hartwell-award-for-genetics-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/2010\/04\/20\/busms-goldstein-wins-hartwell-award-for-genetics-research\/","title":{"rendered":"BUSM’s Goldstein Wins Hartwell Award for Genetics Research"},"content":{"rendered":"

For decades, Richard Goldstein has been trying to unlock a genetic puzzle that holds the secret to a more effective vaccine for a pneumonia strain that kills more than a million children a year worldwide. For his work, the BU School of Medicine professor of pediatrics was recently awarded a three-year, $300,000 grant from the Hartwell Foundation, which funds biomedical applied research with the potential to benefit children.<\/p>\n

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Richard Goldstein is inspired by a long-deceased but towering figure in science: Charles Darwin. Photo by Vernon Doucette<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Goldstein says he draws ongoing inspiration from a long-deceased but towering figure in science: Charles Darwin.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything I say comes from Darwin\u2019s notes of 1859,\u201d he says, crediting the architect of the theory of evolution with the groundwork for a novel, if especially painstaking, study of mutations in pneumonia-causing bacteria. \u201cIt\u2019s an inventive, cutting-edge approach,\u201d says Goldstein, who has amassed the world\u2019s largest collection of streptococcus pneumonia, a bacterium that lives in the nasal passages. The microbe is the most common cause of bacterial meningitis, one of the top two bacterial culprits in ear infections. \u201cThe healthy high school football star who dies from meningitis \u2014 that\u2019s streptococcus pneumonia,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Without Prevnar, the existing vaccine for streptococcus pneumonia, the global death toll would be far higher. But that vaccine, developed in the late 1990s, prevents infection in only about 8 percent of the known variants of the bacteria\u2019s coating, says Goldstein. Like many vaccines for viruses as well as bacteria, Prevnar works by inducing antibodies in the immune system that are specific to a target. By taking a broader, genetics-based approach, he hopes to create a vaccine that will trigger antibodies for all strains of the streptococcus pneumonia bacteria.<\/p>\n

This is where Goldstein gets help from his old friend Darwin. If he can isolate the bacteria\u2019s evolutionary stable genes \u2014 those that do not mutate \u2014 he can use recombinant genetics, a molecular biologist\u2019s tool, to trick the body into specifically defending itself against unvarying targets. It\u2019s an out-of-the-box approach, involving testing thousands of samples of streptococcus bacteria, which Goldstein has wheedled out of labs around the world. He has already studied genetic sequences in 1,000 of the strains.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a molecular geneticist,\u201d he says. \u201cI think genetics.\u201d Through his research he will be able to identify a previously untapped reservoir of genes that code for the proteins on the bacteria\u2019s surface and function as antibody targets.<\/p>\n

Although Goldstein\u2019s work is immediately focused on streptococcus pneumonia, he says the implications of this novel strategy could apply to all bacterial pathogens.<\/p>\n

In its review of Goldstein\u2019s research, the Hartwell Foundation lauded his work as a \u201cpromising alternative that would provide universal protection against all known pneumococcal strains.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the third year in a row that the Hartwell Foundation has awarded grants to BU researchers. In 2009 a $300,000, three-year grant was awarded to Joyce Wong, a College of Engineering professor of biomedical engineering, for her work creating engineered blood vessels to correct heart defects in children. The previous year a Hartwell grant went to Michael Wolfe, a School of Medicine professor of gastroenterology and medicine and a research professor of physiology and biophysics, for developing a technique to replace deficient hormones in diseases like type 1 diabetes.<\/p>\n

This BU Today<\/em> story was written by Susan Seligson. She can be reached at sueselig@bu.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Richard Goldstein is inspired by a long-deceased but towering figure in science: Charles Darwin. Photo by Vernon Doucette<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For decades, Richard Goldstein has been trying to unlock a genetic puzzle that holds the secret to a more effective vaccine for a pneumonia strain that kills more than a million children a year worldwide. For his work, the BU School of Medicine professor of pediatrics was recently awarded a three-year, $300,000 grant from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}