Evan Scott, PhD
University of Virginia School of Medicine biomedical engineering professor Evan Scott, PhD, has been awarded a $2.5 million NIH grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to develop nanotherapeutic strategies for the treatment of chronic Chagas disease (CD). Also known as American trypanosomiasis, CD is a serious public health problem throughout the western hemisphere caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi). The parasite is carried within triatomine “kissing” bugs, which can spread the infection to a wide range of animals, including dogs, cats, and racoons, and to humans. An estimated 10,000 people die annually from the clinical manifestations or complications of CD, particularly heart failure. Approximately a third of infected individuals develop Chronic Chagas Cardiomyopathy (CCC), which is the leading cause of infectious myocarditis in the world. Symptoms include dilated cardiomyopathy with reduced systolic and diastolic function, arrhythmias, thromboembolic events, and digestive disorders.
Although most notable for its presence in South America, CD was recently designated by the Centers for Disease Control as endemic to the United States, which has received extensive media coverage recently. Prior to this designation, the World Health Organization classified CD as a neglected tropical disease, as treatment of CD has become stagnant. Since most infected individuals are unaware of their condition and the disease has received little attention from governments and the pharmaceutical industry, CD has been labeled a “silent and silenced disease.” With 8 million people infected worldwide, symptomatic CD represents $8 billion in annual economic losses. Of note, much of Dr. Scott’s team’s preliminary research on CD was obtained in collaboration with researchers in Brazil, including professor Celso Nakamura at the University of Maringa, where the parasite has long been endemic.
Dr. Scott’s research team at the UVA NanoSTAR Institute will address two key issues yet to be solved in the treatment of CCC by employing engineered nanoparticles, which serve as tiny vehicles that deliver drugs to specific locations in the body with reduced side effects. The first issue is how to safely target and deplete parasites found in numerous tissues throughout the body, including the heart. Secondly, the researchers aim to develop targeted anti-inflammatory treatment strategies that can selectively suppress the immune system without worsening the infection and disease.
To this end, Dr. Scott’s team aims to develop a combination nanotherapy that simultaneously incorporates an anti-parasitic nanoparticle targeting parasites in fatty tissue and tolerogenic nanoparticles that selectively suppress immune responses only related to heart inflammation. This novel dual treatment strategy will allow treatment of CCC inflammation without broadly suppressing the immune system, while directly killing parasites hiding in fatty tissue. The research will include clinically relevant parasites endemic to the U.S. in collaboration with Igor Almeida, PhD, from the University of Texas at El Paso.
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