SUMMER 2015
Gatorade Gives Back 50 Years of Research Rewards
Summer 2015, Vol. 20, No. 2
Innovation Turns 50
4
Gatorade changed UF forever.
Sweat Equity
8
The birth of a culture of sports science research at UF.
Fill ’Er Up
16
Gatorade Fuel Bar serves athletes’ nutritional needs.
Dr. Robert Cade’s original lab, as re-created at the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville. John Jernigan, photography.
Dr. Kent Fuchs President Dr. David Norton Vice President for Research
Going Viral
18
Structural biologists seek to understand how viruses and cells interact.
Early Years
24
UF center is focused on learning from infancy.
Explore is published by the UF Office of Research. Opinions expressed do not reflect the official views of the university. Use of trade names implies no endorsement by the University of Florida. Š 2015 University of Florida. explore.research.ufl.edu Editor: Joseph M. Kays joekays@ufl.edu
Hall of Famers
30
Board of Trustees Steven M. Scott – Chair David L. Brandon Susan M. Cameron Christopher T. Corr Paul Davenport Charles B. Edwards James W. Heavener Joselin Padron-Rasines Rahul Patel Jason J. Rosenberg Robert G. Stern David M. Thomas Anita G. Zucker
Two UF scientists join Florida Inventors Hall of Fame.
Art Director: Katherine Kinsley-Momberger Design and Illustration: Katherine Kinsley-Momberger Paul Messal Nancy Schreck Writers: Scott Carter Chris Harry Cindy Spence Copy Editor: Bruce Mastron
This special issue of Explore highlights a sampling of the many research projects funded by Gatorade royalties or inspired by the work of Dr. Robert Cade and his colleagues a half century ago.
Printing: StorterChilds Printing, Gainesville Member of the University Research Magazine Association www.urma.org
Innovation Turns 50 Gatorade changed UF forever
Like so much of science, the invention of Gatorade 50 years ago seems to have happened by magic, as if the whole story could be told in a 90-second television commercial narrated by Keith Jackson. But a closer look at the copious amounts of data Dr. Robert Cade and his colleagues recorded by hand as they sought to understand the physiological changes Gator football players were experiencing in the hot, humid Florida summer reveals the science behind the magic.
4 Summer 2015
In small, concise script across yellow ledger paper, the researchers recorded ambient temperature and humidity, sodium and glucose levels, plasma and potassium volume, and times in the mile and 880-yard run. The results were eye-opening. The players’ electrolytes were completely out of balance, their blood sugar was low and their total blood volume was low. The impact on the body of this upheaval in chemistry was profound. “Each of these conditions, by itself, would to some extent incapacitate a player,” Cade said. “Put them all together and you can have real problems.” With hard data in hand, Cade’s team began pursuing a remedy. “The solution,” Cade said, “was to give them water, but with salt in it to replace the salt they were losing in sweat.
Heisman Trophy winner and longtime Gator coach Steve Spurrier drinks Gatorade from a milk carton on the sidelines during a game in 1966. In those days before computers, Dr. Cade and his research fellows recorded all their data on ledger paper.
Also, give them sugar to keep their blood sugar up, but not so much sugar that it would upset their stomachs.” By all accounts, the first batch tasted so bad none of the scientists could stomach it, but when Cade’s wife, Mary, suggested adding lemon juice, the drink that would soon become known as Gatorade was born. The Gators saw the results on the field immediately, often coming from behind to win games, and in time so did athletes on other teams and in other sports.
Explore 5
Oversized Impact
Jesse S. Jones
University of Florida faculty have been conducting scientific experiments since the university’s earliest days — in agriculture, engineering, medicine and many other fields — but the experiments Cade’s team conducted in 1965 have had an oversized impact on the university in the intervening half century. The more than $250 million in royalties Gatorade has brought to the university have helped to fund thousands of research projects, often providing seed money to faculty who were then able to leverage it into millions more in grants from public and private agencies. Indeed, many of the UF faculty who brought a record $702 million in research awards to the university last year have benefitted from Gatorade support. Below are some recent examples of Gatorade investments. “These funds have allowed us to be competitive with some of the top schools in the country in terms of preparing ourselves with infrastructure, making strategic investments and recruiting high-end researchers in a way that would not have occurred otherwise,” says UF Vice President for Research David Norton.
“We’re moving the cuttingedge research generated at the university from the laboratory to the market, where it helps people in their daily lives. Outside the lab, these inventions can make the world a better place.” — David Norton
6 Summer 2015
John Jernigan
UF Vice President for Research
Lake Nona The UF Research and Academic Center at Lake Nona near Orlando is home to vital research on new therapies and cures, increased opportunities for participation in clinical research and enhanced access to professional and graduate pharmacy education. The $53 million, 100,000-square-foot facility extends UF’s presence into the greater Orlando area. The center’s proximity to the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, Nemours Children’s Hospital and other health-care organizations within the Lake Nona medical city complex and the wider Orlando area will foster collaboration that stimulates innovative approaches to research and patient care. “The new center harnesses the resources, expertise and research capabilities of multidisciplinary teams, bringing together renowned researchers, clinicians, teachers and students with the ultimate goal of providing effective therapies and improving health for patients,” said Dr. David S. Guzick, UF senior vice president for health affairs.
Gatorade’s success has also inspired generations of scientists to think about how their discoveries could be transferred to the marketplace. UF entomologist Nan-Yao Su credits Cade for providing him with the inspiration to pursue a new treatment for termites that became the Sentricon Termite Colony Elimination System. Since its introduction in 1995, Sentricon has protected millions of buildings and generated more than $40 million in royalties. “Gatorade and Sentricon are sort of linked together now, not just because they were both invented at UF and were very successful products, but because Dr. Cade inspired a lot of people, including myself,” Su says. Gatorade also inspired university leaders to pursue technology transfer aggressively and today UF is consistently ranked among the top
Disease Ecology Medical geographer Sadie J. Ryan’s work takes her around the world, from Equatorial Africa to Ecuador. She has studied disease vectors of malaria, dengue fever and cholera; foraging behaviors of albatrosses; population declines of African great apes; and the correlation between climate and disease, just to name a few. Though Ryan’s work is broad and diverse, one overarching element is her novel use of mapping and models. For instance, in a recent publication she and her colleagues used a new predictability model that they superimposed onto a number of different maps to show how climate change will transform malaria transmission. “I’m happy to take messy data and help organize it,” said Ryan, also a member of UF’s Emerging Pathogens Institute.
institutions in the world at moving discoveries into the marketplace. “We had a head start on much of the community because of Gatorade and what that invention meant to us,” Norton says. Over the past 12 years UF has launched more than 160 biomedical and technology startups. According to the Association of University Technology Managers, in 2013 UF ranked sixth in the nation with 16 startups launched and eighth for US patents issued with 107. Gatorade has also helped to support UF’s two business incubators. The Florida Innovation Hub at UF has contributed to the creation of hundreds of jobs in just its first four
Super Models Faculty and students in the College of Design, Construction and Planning and the College of the Arts are now able to create architectural models and three-dimensional artwork with greater precision in a fraction of the time. Gone are the days of hand-cutting hundreds of tiny pieces of balsa wood for an architectural model. With the state-of-the-art laser cutters funded through this grant, faculty and students design the pieces they need with specialized software that then figures out the optimum layout on the wood, plastic or metal. Then, the lasers cleanly cut all the pieces in seconds. The same goes for the 3-D scanners and printers. The scanners can capture an existing object for use in a computer assisted design program, while the printers create new objects layer by layer.
years and the Sid Martin Biotechnology Incubator was recently ranked “World’s Best University Biotechnology Incubator,” based on an extensive analysis of 150 incubators in 22 countries. “We’re moving the cutting-edge research generated at the university from the laboratory to the market, where it helps people in their daily lives,” Norton says. “Outside the lab, these inventions can make the world a better place.”
Genetics Institute The University of Florida Genetics Institute currently includes more than two dozen doctoral students participating in a multifaceted research program designed to develop strong integrative geneticists who incorporate many different subfields into their work. The Graduate Program in Genetics utilizes the combined talents of UF faculty to offer a comprehensive genetics training program that affords students unique opportunities and insights into fundamental aspects of genetics. As we face global challenges to agriculture, medicine, and society during the 21st century, the UFGI is training students to participate in and lead the ongoing biological revolution to the benefit of society. One student recently won the UF Big Idea Competition and its $25,000 grand prize for developing a startup company focused on stem cell therapy for competitive horses. Another student was one of only 12 in the nation to earn a United Negro College Fund Dissertation Fellowship to complete her coursework, conduct research and prepare her dissertation.
Explore 7
SP BY C I N DY
8 Summer 2015 2014
ENCE
C
hampions at the University of Florida – whether in sports or science – are built on a lemonlime foundation. From the Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Institute to the Center for Exercise Science and the College of Medicine, scientists have teamed up to study the human body’s response to exertion – from elite performance to injury – following in the footsteps of Gatorade pioneer Dr. Robert Cade. There’s Mike Jansen, a Gator swimmer turned cardiologist, who couldn’t get away from Gatorade during his UF athletic career. And Scott Powers, a college distance runner in the early 1970s, who remembers the “off” taste of the first formulations, and who met the
Gatorade inventor when he arrived at UF as a young exercise physiologist. And former gymnast and swimmer MaryBeth Horodyski, who enlisted one of the original Gatorade guinea pigs, head ball Coach Steve Spurrier, in research with her graduate students on heat stress in football players. At UF, the quest to know more about the effects of exercise on the human body started with Gatorade, but it didn’t end there. As Gatorade’s reach has grown – powders, chews, gels, protein shakes and protein bars, gum, G2, and flavors galore – so has UF’s sports and exercise research enterprise. Horodyski is the research director at the Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Institute, or OSMI, one
of perhaps four labs of its caliber in the United States. It has force plates, 22 state-of-the art cameras for motion capture, instrumented treadmills, masks, sensors and computer programs run by faculty researchers and a biomedical engineer - all turning motion into science. Studies on football, baseball and basketball are ever popular. But so are running, swimming, gymnastics, softball, tennis, volleyball, lacrosse, soccer, golf, cycling, even archery. Although no one has asked – yet – UF sports scientists have room in the cavernous motion analysis lab at OSMI to examine the motion of an angler casting a fly-fishing line.
Photo by Jason Parkhurst
GATORADE LAUNCHED A CULTURE OF SPORTS SCIENCE RESEARCH AT UF
Explore 9
“THIS FACILITY IS A WIN-WIN FOR EVERYBODY. PATIENTS AND ATHLETES OF ALL ABILITIES CAN SEE DOCTORS AND PHYSICAL THERAPISTS AND TAKE PART IN RESEARCH ALL IN ONE PLACE.” — MARYBETH HORODYSKI
The research portfolio is vast, but one of Horodyski’s projects with Spurrier carried on a tradition the coach himself helped start. Horodyski and her students needed football players for heat stress research in the late 1990s, and where better to find them than Florida Field? Spurrier agreed, as had his own coach, Ray Graves, who tested the first Gatorade formulas to hydrate his players. Horodyski wanted Gator players to swallow a sensor three hours before kickoff. The sensors’ radiofrequencies would send measurements of the players’ heart rates and core temperatures to a computer on the sidelines. “The players just played. They came on and off the field with no
Right, Gators quarterback Tim Tebow used the motion analysis lab to examine his throwing technique.
10 Summer 2015 2014
distractions,” says Horodyski. Spurrier’s only concern was getting home from a road game through airport security with players who had a sensor meandering through their gastrointestinal tract, so Horodyski sent a graduate student to the Gainesville airport for a little test. “She swallowed the sensor, and every half hour, she walked through security,” Horodyski says. “She was tiny, so if she didn’t set it off, there’s no way those big guys would set it off. Coach Spurrier said to her, ‘I can’t leave a player behind because of you guys,’ so she went back and forth, back and forth, to be sure all the players could make it home.”
The sweltering environment of The Swamp was the inspiration for another idea – the air-cooled shoulder pads in use on the sidelines today. Designed by UF researcher Nikolaus Gravenstein and a team that included former Gator player Michael Gilmore, then an orthopedic resident, the pads were tested at OSMI. Football players have a microenvironment underneath their shoulder pads and helmet. Once the game starts, particularly in The Swamp, the humidity level goes off the charts. “They get soaking wet, and get very, very, very hot, very fast, with no way to cool down,” Horodyski says. The air-cooled shoulder pad system blows cool, dry air through the pads. That dries the shirt and takes advantage of the body’s natural method for cooling – evaporation. Football fans who look closely can see the pads at work on the sidelines: When a player reaches the bench, a student runs up and hooks a blue coiled line to the shoulder pads. When he returns to the field, the player unclips the line.
To test the pads, OSMI developed a heat room and asked former players to run on a treadmill in shoulder pads. Air cooling beats systems that use water, Horodyski says, because unlike water, air does not add weight to the pads. Horodyski’s latest research involves spine injuries, a topic that made Gator news in the spring with the untimely retirement of UF offensive tackle Rod Johnson. Johnson was diagnosed with congenital cervical stenosis, narrowing of the spine, following a practice injury. Horodyski is studying spine boards of different types and protocols for using them, and has also evaluated a new shoulder pad design that allows the pads to be removed with minimal motion, a key factor in keeping a spine injury from worsening. In 3 to 25 percent of cases of paralysis following a sports injury, the paralysis may occur when preparing the athlete for transport to the hospital.
Above, Gator football players use air-cooled shoulder pads developed and tested by UF scientists to reduce heat stress. Top, new ripcord shoulder pads can be removed from an injured player on the field without moving the player.
“My goal is to prevent that second injury from happening,” says Horodyski. The current trend is to use spine boards less frequently, but Horodyski says they still are important: “If we have a 300-pound football player on the field with a suspected cervical spine injury, how are we getting him off the field?” The new, ripcord shoulder pads make it possible to remove the pads without moving the player. Horodyski had commented on the need for new shoulder pad designs at a lecture in Chicago, and nine months later got a call from an athletic trainer who had been in the audience. He asked her to test the pads, and now the pads are hitting fields across the country. “You never have to lift the person, roll them, anything. They can be lying down, you pull a cord, and the straps in the back detach, so you can pull the pads off from the sides,” Horodyski says.
Explore 11
“THE PROBLEM WITH ATHLETES IS THAT THEIR HEARTS ARE A LITTLE BIT DIFFERENT. THERE ARE SUBTLE DIFFERENCES THAT AN ATHLETE CAN HAVE THAT ARE NORMAL, BUT SOMEONE WHO IS NOT AN EXPERT MIGHT CALL ABNORMAL.” — MIKE JANSEN
Mike Jansen during his Gator swimming career.
12 Summer 2015 2014
Across campus, at the College of Medicine, Jansen says he enjoyed his status as a test market for new Gatorade products in his swim team years, 1998-2002. Some of the products were odd, he says, but a super-sweet product called a Go shake was his favorite. “I remember loving those things after lifting weights, but the swimmers only got one; the football players got two after their workouts,” Jansen says. “But we couldn’t get away from Gatorade. I think I drank more Gatorade than water during my time here. It was everywhere.” Jansen’s interest is sudden cardiac death in athletes, sparked in part by the on-court death of basketball star Hank Gathers in his childhood. When he retired his suit to go to medical school, he became an electrophysiologist, an “electrician of the heart,” as he calls it. He is looking forward to a new initiative, a UF Health Sports and Exercise Cardiology team starting in August at UF’s Springhill offices. Nearby Santa Fe College athletes will be tested there, said director and cardiologist Floyd Burke. That program, added to datasets from tests
of athletes at UF and elsewhere, could push the frontiers of what is known about the hearts of athletes, Burke and Jansen say. “The problem with athletes is that their hearts are a little bit different. There are subtle differences that an athlete can have that are normal, but someone who is not an expert might call abnormal,” Jansen says. “What are we looking at in these hearts, the differences between athletes and non-athletes?” Athletes’ hearts can be a bit thicker and more enlarged, and even look like the heart of someone who has had hypertension for many years, leading to further testing that is unnecessary or to a mistaken diagnosis of disease. For the past three years, the University Athletic Association has conducted EKGs and echocardiograms of all freshmen and transfer athletes, a database that Jansen says may one day be ripe for data mining. About half of NCAA BCS conferences also test, and Jansen sees potential for building a conferencewide or even national database. Although Jansen has reservations about over-testing, as long as data is being collected, it should be used for research. The issue, he says, is whether testing could cost an athlete a shot at success. “When you tell someone they can’t play anymore, that’s a tough blow, especially when we’re not very good at predicting who’s going to have an issue,” Jansen says. “A lot of our expert opinions are really just based on opinions and not facts. Sudden cardiac death is a very rare event, but it’s devastating, and if we could find a better way to study it, I’d like to be a part of it.”
The Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Institute is one of a handful of highly equipped labs that analyze athletic performance, such as the VO2 test of the athlete at right, and provide injury rehabilitation.
Exercise, naturally, is not just the domain of athletes these days. Its benefits extend from the Michael Jordans of the world to the John and Jane Does, and that’s where the Center for Exercise Science focuses its research. Center director Powers recalls Cade working with members of the Department of Applied Physiology and Kinesiology on various projects. While Cade knew Gatorade would have to succeed with football to hit the big time in the Deep South, he knew endurance athletes would benefit, too, Powers says. As a former college distance runner, Powers says, he understood the benefits of Gatorade, despite its early taste, and later, as a member of the Gatorade Sports Science Institute for a decade, he provided input on sports nutrition products and watched Gatorade morph from a drink for athletes to a drink for the guy mowing the lawn. Just as Gatorade reached the masses, so did the early sports and exercise physiology research. “We believe the most important research contribution we can make
is why exercise is protective of health and how we can best use that information,” Powers says. Indeed, Horodyski says, the elite labs at OSMI are open to weekend warriors, not just the top-notch athletes, although she remembers spaces perhaps less grand. Horodyski says when she arrived at UF in 1992, her first lab space, coincidentally, was in an area used to store the original cans of Gatorade, which was so potent that some of it seeped through and left rings on the shelves. The move to the high-tech institute building in 2004 was a big leap forward for UF sports research, Horodyski says, adding that she designed the lab with input from other researchers, all with some sports in their background. “I knew we wanted it big,” Horodyski says, “and we had a physician who used to play baseball, who wanted it to be long enough from one end to the other to do pitching testing at the real length from the mound to home plate.” As a result, the lab is a go-to stop for Major League pitchers recovering
from an injury. Gymnasts do handstands on the force plates and volleyball players with markers demonstrate hits with a real volleyball net. Elite runners show up for the Running Medicine program and can either use the pressure-sensitive track or the treadmill, which operates horizontally and at an incline but also, unusually, on a downhill slope. And the retiree running a first 5K can come, too, to learn more about foot strike and stride and pace. And, of course, they all bring their Gatorade. MaryBeth Horodyski Professor of Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation horodmb@ortho.ufl.edu Scott Powers Professor of Applied Physiology and Kinesiology spowers@hhp.ufl.edu Michael Jansen Assistant Professor of Medicine michael.jansen@medicine.ufl.edu Related websites: www.ortho.ufl.edu http://apk.hhp.ufl.edu
Explore 13
THE GOAL IS TO ENROLL 37,000 PARTICIPANTS TO STUDY THE LONG-TERM IMPACT OF HEAD INJURIES ON ATHLETES AND SOLDIERS
University of Florida is one of 11 original NCAA programs invited to participate in a landmark concussion study. The $30 million study is funded by the NCAA and the Department of Defense and will include the four service academies as well, along with additional NCAA programs in the future. The goal is to enroll 37,000 participants to study the long-term impact of head injuries on athletes and soldiers. “It is the biggest concussion study ever undertaken. There is so much
14 Summer 2015 2014
unknown about concussions,’’ says UF team doctor Jay Clugston, who directs UF’s Sports Concussion Center. “This is the first attempt to get a big enough group of data to actually show what’s going on. It kind of builds on the stuff we’ve been doing. They wanted to have schools that are successful athletically, that have success in research, and had an interest in this. We were fortunate to
be invited to do it. It will help us inform and educate our athletes better.” A concussion is a traumatic brain injury that can cause headaches and problems with concentration, memory, vision, balance and coordination. Clugston has studied concussion since 2005 and works closely with athletic trainers in all sports, with an emphasis on football, women’s soccer and women’s lacrosse, the sports at UF that produce the most concussions. The University Athletic Association plans to add testing for men’s and women’s basketball.
“THIS IS THE FIRST ATTEMPT TO GET A BIG ENOUGH GROUP OF DATA TO ACTUALLY SHOW WHAT’S GOING ON.” — JAY CLUGSTON
80 degree Fahrenheit freezer located in a locked room adjacent to the football team’s training room before it is shipped to a lab for testing. Once athletes give a baseline sample, blood is collected again if they suffer a concussion to see if there are increased levels of several proteins in their blood. According to various studies, increased levels of protein markers signal potential damage to the brain and researchers are trying to learn more about whether the proteins are reliable biomarkers to gauge presence and severity of concussions. As athletes across all sports have become bigger, faster and stronger, concussions continue to be an issue despite technological and design improvements in modern equipment. “There is a big focus on finding objective ways to detect concussions,’’ Clugston said. “Currently, we can’t see the injury. We have to test people for it with functional tests before they get injured, and then repeat those same tests after the injury. There is no other injury we do that for.” — Scott Carter Jay Clugston Assistant Professor of Community Health and Family Medicine jayclug@ufl.edu
For more: https://floridagators.exposure. co/heady-ambitions
Photography by Tim Casey
“We felt like this was an area where we could really make an impact for our student-athletes,” says Lynda Tealer, UF executive associate athletics director for administration. “We have a set of student-athletes that train at the highest level, function at the highest level and compete at the highest level. They are a good set of kids to work with and also, they have some interest in their health and their own well-being and felt like this is something they would want to be involved with, too.” A primary component of the joint study is to build a more comprehensive data bank. UF has had its own concussion data bank since 2013, with retrospective data that dates back to 2005. To gather data, each of UF’s 500 or so student-athletes is given baseline tests at the Sports Concussion Center prior to participating in his or her first practice. The UAA also has been studying blood biomarkers to detect concussion since 2011 when it partnered with UF spin-off company Banyan Biomarkers. The project has evolved in recent years to include advanced magnetic resonance imaging techniques as well as in-helmet sensors to measure the impact of hits. Athletes who choose to participate can give a blood sample, which is processed and stored inside a minus
Clockwise from top left, Dr. Jay Clugston reviews data with assistant Matt Graham. Blood samples are collected from UF athletes and stored at minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit. If an athlete suffers a concussion, blood is collected again and examined for elevated levels of several proteins. On the sidelines, trainer Paul Silvestri plays a key role in injury diagnosis, and Graham, bottom, records data on Riddell’s Head Impact Telemetry Systems.
Explore 15
I
Gatorade Fuel Bar serves athletes’ nutritional needs
16 Summer 2015
t’s 6:30 a.m. in the south end zone at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, yet the weight room is bustling with workout groups from the football, softball and soccer teams. As the athletes wrap up their sessions, for many there is now a mandatory stop they make before exiting the facility. Belly up, folks, to the Gatorade Fuel Bar. What was once a simple countertop area with some refrigerators has been converted into a full-service nutritional refueling station that UF athletes routinely visit post-workout as part of their training plan, whether on a weight-gain, maintain or lean-out schedule. “The whole setup is just really appealing. Perfect, actually,” junior defensive tackle Joey Ivie said. “With the bar right there, no one
is walking out of here without their protein. You can’t miss it.” That’s the idea. “Basically, because of the fueling of their bodies and the amount of caloric expenditure that occurs during a workout, to be able to advance that recovery so readily, makes it special,” said UF Director of Strength and Conditioning Mike Kent, who accompanied football coach Jim McElwain from Colorado State. “Everything is basically set up so we know how many calories are being burnt in a workout and this is how we can restore those calories faster and more efficiently.” Gatorade-contracted programs began installing the bars last year. Perhaps it was only fitting that this state-of-the-art model showed up in time to celebrate Gatorade’s 50th birthday at the very place the
Photography by Tim Casey
sports drink was invented by Dr. Robert Cade in 1965. A pictorial timeline of Gatorade’s history is part of the slick graphics package that decorates the bar area — under the heading, “Born In the Lab” — that includes a 12-foot food prep and workspace counter, under-counter pass-through visicoolers, blender stations, cabinet and organizational system, plus an iPad affixed to the wall so workers can have an athlete’s nutritional specifications at their fingertips. The University Athletic Association (UAA) announced plans to include a variation of the bar in the renovation of the basketball facility weight room. That fueling outpost will serve the basketball, golf and tennis programs. “Obviously, monitoring nutrition is one of the most important things
we do as far as taking care of our athletes,” said Chip Howard, UAA’s executive associate director for internal affairs. “Now we can do it better.” The UAA’s new director of sports nutrition, Stephanie Wilson, oversees the Gatorade Bar and its operation. A staff of interns handles the day-to-day workings of the station, making sure the chocolate, vanilla, chocolate-peanut butter or strawberry-banana shakes are prepared, stocked and made to specifications, with calculations based on weight and lean muscle mass. The feedback from the athletes has been all thumbs up. “I think they all love it,” said postgraduate intern and interim nutritionist Tiffany Ilten. “Visually it’s very appealing, with a kind of futuristic
look to it, and you can’t beat the convenience. Above all, it’s helping them accomplish their goals.” And depending on the time, sometimes the bar is stacked two and three rows deep, not unlike one of the hotspots in Midtown across University Avenue. “Yeah,” nodded senior tight end Jake McGee, with a smile “Only here, you don’t have to tip.” Nope. Just belly up and fuel up. “We’re fortunate to be at a place like the University of Florida where we can have nice things like this,” senior linebacker Antonio Morrison said. “It looks good and it’s good for us.” – Chris Harry
Explore 17
18 Summer 2015
V
Structural Biologists Seek to Understand How Viruses and Cells Interact BY CINDY SPENCE
F
or the billions of viral particles that populate our bodies, the connections they make with host cells can be the difference between sickness and health. Mavis Agbandje-McKenna has spent much of her career seeking to understand those connections and manipulate them, either to prevent disease or cure it. “Viruses can infect you and do nothing, they can infect you and have minor effects, or they can kill you,” says Agbandje-McKenna, director of UF’s Center for Structural Biology. As a structural virologist, AgbandjeMcKenna uses X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy to “see” viruses just 20 billionths of a meter in diameter in three dimensions and observe how they use protrusions of proteins on their surface to attach to a cell.
Explore 19
ene GTherapy Viruses are not “alive” in the classic sense and cannot replicate their own genetic material. They must commandeer a cell’s machinery to replicate their own DNA or RNA, creating new viral particles that then exit and move on to the next cell, spreading infection. And the interplay between proteins on the surface of the cell and the invading virus can be the difference between a virus that is benign and one that is lethal. “One or two amino acids out of over 500 will lead to a virus that either kills, or doesn’t kill,” says Agbandje-McKenna. “So, then, my question is where are those differences located, and what is it that they are doing that enables them to have this very disparate difference in phenotype.”
20 Summer 2015
The average person probably sees all viruses as bad, but medical researchers have used benign viruses for years to deliver corrective genes from one organism to another. For example, University of Florida researchers were pioneers in using the adeno-associated virus, or AAV, as a vector to ferry therapeutic genes to different parts of the body to treat diseases such as blindness and cystic fibrosis. But Agbandje-McKenna says more than half the population has been exposed to AAVs and developed an immunity that would preclude AAV-based vectors from delivering their repair gene to the target. Using what she’s learned about the structure of viruses and their host cells, Agbandje-McKenna is working to understand where antibodies bind to these viruses, so she can use molecular biology to change the connection point just enough to fool the body. “Then I can use the virus as a gene delivery vector,” Agbandje-McKenna says. “It’s as if my body hasn’t seen that virus before, because I’ve changed the site where that antibody would normally bind.”
Many viruses are adaptable and can mutate quickly, producing different strains. Influenza, for example, is so adaptable that the flu vaccine changes year to year. “The only time you get a new cold is if you haven’t seen that strain before. If you’ve seen it, and survived it, you’ve created antibodies, so the next time you see it, those antibodies will stop that virus from causing disease,” Agbandje-McKenna says. Another challenge is that, just like their more virulent cousins, some benign viruses infect the lungs better, some infect the eyes better, others infect the liver or the kidneys better. They establish a specialty, so to speak, so using a virus whose specialty is infecting the liver to deliver a gene to treat lung disease is not very effective, says Agbandje-McKenna. “What is it that allows them to establish different niches in different tissues,” says Agbandje-McKenna. “If I understand that, I know which virus can be tailored for treating different diseases in different organs.” Agbandje-McKenna has done just that to develop a gene therapy treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a rare strain of muscular dystrophy that affects only boys and is almost always fatal before patients reach their mid-20s. She took two viruses with known structures and combined them to create a new organism called AAV 2.5. The treatment is currently undergoing clinical trials at the University of North Carolina.
Using what she’s learned about the structure of viruses and their host cells, Agbandje-McKenna is working to understand where the antibodies bind to viruses, so she can use molecular biology to change the connection point just enough to fool the body.
Agbandje-McKenna is also investigating how to use some virus’s affinity for cancer cells to pinpoint delivery of chemotherapy drugs. She is working to understand how a virus, currently in clinical trials for brain and spine tumors known as glioblastoma multiforme, is able to target these cancer cells and not normal cells. She plans to use this information to improve specific tissue targeting by other viruses. Understanding structure also is important in viruses that cause illness. Agbandje-McKenna is particularly interested in parvoviruses, such as human bocavirus, a cause of respiratory infections, and parvovirus B19, which causes Fifth Disease, the fifth most common childhood disease. Fifth Disease, a rash, is rampant in day care centers and other places children congregate. While it is not generally fatal to children, it can cause problems for pregnant women. “We see it in places where children are, and that’s actually more dangerous, because that is where you’re going to find pregnant women, and if they get it, the fetus can be aborted,” says Agbandje-McKenna.
[
[
Antibody binds to virus, preventing it from infecting the cell.
New viruses are released as the host cell bursts open and is destroyed. The virus attaches to a specific host cell. Virus
Host cell
The virus causes the cell to make viral genetic material and protein. Nucleus
The virus’s genetic material enters the host cell.
Viral proteins
New viruses form inside of the host cell. Source: Adapted from iStock.
Viruses are not “alive” in the classic sense and cannot replicate their own genetic material. They must commandeer a cell’s machinery to replicate their own DNA or RNA, creating new viral particles that then exit and move on to the next cell, spreading infection. Explore 21
Unlikely
Path
“Discovering cures is what I want, but I want it done right. I don’t want to rush; I don’t like to jump ahead without understanding the fundamentals. I’m very basic science oriented.” — Mavis Agbandje-McKenna
22 Summer 2015
It’s hard to imagine a more unlikely path to science and the University of Florida than the one Agbandje-McKenna has followed. Born in Nigeria, she was living with her grandmother when civil war broke out in her country in the late 1960s and more than two million people died from violence or famine. Agbandje-McKenna was able to escape and moved to London to join her parents when she was 11 years old. One day, when she feels it is safe, she would like to take her two children and her husband to Nigeria, to meet her aunts and uncles and see her heritage. “Most days, I visualize it, I can see it. I was old enough when I left to remember, so I can see it in my head and kind of relive it, very often
actually,” says Agbandje-McKenna. “One day I would like to go back.” She earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of London, where she met her husband and research partner, UF molecular biologist Robert McKenna. Like many couples in science fields, they looked for two jobs in the same location when they came to the United States for postdoctoral work. They found that at Purdue University, where Agbandje-McKenna learned X-ray crystallography, a skill that shifted her work from pure chemistry to structural virology. She says her chemistry background is helpful, and the opportunity to work with her husband has been rewarding. When they arrived at UF in 1999 they shared a lab at the McKnight Brain Institute until their operation needed more space. Between the two of them, they supervise at least a dozen students at a time and even though their labs are now separate, they share the workload.
Photography by Maria Belen Farias
“We help supervise each other’s students,” Agbandje-McKenna says. “If I’m not there, he’s there, and if he’s not there, I’m there. It’s a very studentcentric lab, and we like the training, and the energy the students have.” Shweta Kailasan, a five-year veteran of the lab who expects to get her Ph.D. this summer, says her foundation in structural biology is solid because of Agbandje-McKenna’s training. “When you leave here as an independent researcher you want to be able to conduct experiments by yourself, independently, and be able to design them rationally,” Kailasan said. “I can do that because of her mentorship.” Kailasan has played a major role in the bocavirus research, solving the structure of several bocaviruses and enabling development of a peptide that could generate an immune response and perhaps lead to a vaccine. In 2012, Agbandje-McKenna joined the Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Subcommittee of the
“When you leave here as an independent researcher you want to be able to conduct experiments by yourself, independently, and be able to design them rationally. I can do that because of her mentorship.” — Shweta Kailasan
National Advisory Allergy and Infectious Diseases Council at the National Institutes of Health, a plum assignment that gives her an early look at the latest work in her field. She sits on a panel that reviews grant proposals and decides which to fund — which helps her, and UF, in multiple ways. “This allows me to know what the virology community is thinking, and I get to see the sorts of projects that come to the top of the list. That helps me write my grants and helps me advise junior faculty on how to get their grants funded,” says AgbandjeMcKenna. “That’s very, very good for me, and it’s information I can bring to UF, to my department or anyone else I’m mentoring. And it’s good visibility for UF.” Agbandje-McKenna says she likes to stay focused on the how and why of the viral world, letting tech transfer and patents “just happen.” Still, she is happy to advise on translating research to the world at large, and she has a
research agreement with AGTC, a local biotech company, and is on the scientific advisory board for Voyager Therapeutics Inc., which works on vector development for brain diseases. “The people in biotech realize that what we do at the basic science level is important for making translational steps,” says Agbandje-McKenna. “Discovering cures is what I want, but I want it done right. I don’t want to rush; I don’t like to jump ahead without understanding the fundamentals. I’m very basic science oriented. I want to be able to see the structure, and after seeing it, understand how it does what it does. If you understand that, the rest of it comes.” Mavis Agbandje-McKenna Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology mckenna@ufl.edu Related website: http://msg.mbi.ufl.edu/index.html
Explore 23
24 Summer 2015
1
2
4
3
5
UF Center Is Focused On Learning From Infancy By Cindy Spence
Photography by Russ Bryant
S
andra Dodgens was taking a break from being a foster parent after the heartbreak of losing a child with cerebral palsy. Then a social worker called her about a pair of twins in critical need. The previous foster parent had them for 30 hours and gave up. Dodgens decided to help. The social worker told her the boys had severe developmental delays with possible autism and dyslexia, and one had obsessive-compulsive disorder. They were 3 years old, but didn’t communicate except for twin-speak. They were not potty trained, but they were agile: She caught them swinging from a chandelier. Dodgens knew she would need help for the challenge ahead, and one of the people she turned to was Patricia Snyder, an early intervention
t
provider then and now a noted University of Florida early childhood studies researcher. “These babies had been kept in a vacuum, they were non-verbal and likely headed to special education classes,” Dodgens says. “But I knew Pat, and I knew she was on the cutting edge of work with parental involvement, and she had strategies we could use.” Dodgens set about labeling the boys’ environment — chair, table, bed — and teaching them to speak and how to behave. Dodgens noticed small changes immediately, and documented the boys’ progress week by week. She grew attached, and by the time they were 9, she had adopted them. Today, she is the proud mom of two college students, both thriving.
Responsive interactions with the youngest children build a lifelong foundation for learning and development, says University of Florida researcher Patricia Snyder, left.
Explore 25
“A lot of people don’t know that you actually have to engage and talk regularly to young children,” Dodgens says. “If we really want to make a difference in children’s lives, that early investment is the key.” Snyder says many parents believe a baby cannot interact before learning to talk, and many assume learning begins when a child enters preschool or kindergarten. “In fact, learning begins at birth, or even before,” Snyder says. “By prekindergarten, it’s three years too late if the child, as an infant or toddler, has not had responsive early interactions and learning experiences. Prekindergarten is very important, but for children who are most vulnerable, one year of pre-K is not enough to close a gap that can start very early.” Study after study has shown that 90 percent of brain development occurs in the first five years of life. From birth to age 5, children’s interactions and experiences with their environment build a foundation of
Study after study has
brain architecture that influences the remainder of a child’s life, Snyder says. “Learning doesn’t just happen when you’re reading a book, it happens in everyday life experiences. Learning happens during mealtime, on a walk, in the grocery store, or on the playground. It is critically important to help families understand the contextualized nature of early learning and how responsive, serve-and-return interactions with children in everyday contexts support their development and learning,” Snyder says. Snyder describes a recent incident she observed that illustrated the importance of early interactions. While waiting for a flight at the airport, she noticed a young mom traveling with a baby about 4 months old in a stroller. The baby was extremely stressed and crying, obviously hungry, and the mom was talking on her cellphone, not attending to the baby’s cues or signals. As the baby’s stress level and crying escalated, the mom pulled a bottle from
the diaper bag and propped it in her baby’s mouth, then went back to her cellphone. The baby was too young to hold the bottle, so it kept falling out. Each time the bottle fell out of the baby’s mouth, the baby would cry and the mother would reposition the bottle while she talked on the phone. “I watched this happen three or four times in the span of 10 minutes and never once did the mom leave the cellphone and attend to and comfort her infant or interact with him,” Snyder says. “As I watched this unfold, I realized that even with all of our research and knowledge, we still have such a long way to go to spread the word about the importance of children’s early experiences.” Reflecting on her work with families, Snyder considered this mother’s capacity as a caregiver and wondered where there might be a strength on which to build. She found an answer when another woman traveling with a small dog sat behind the young mom. Turning away from her cellphone for
PARENT-CHILD INTERACTIONS:
shown that 90 percent of brain development occurs in the first five years of life. From birth to age 5,
5.5% Did not read in the past week 14.2% Did not tell a story in the past week 17.3% Did not teach songs or music in the past week
children’s interactions and experiences with their environment build
20.5% Did no crafts in the past week 57.6% Did not visit the library in the past month
a foundation of brain SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education.
architecture that influences the remainder of a child’s life.
26 Summer 2015
the first time, the mom began interacting with the dog in a compassionate manner. “I really do not think the young mother understood the importance of interacting with her baby although she had the capacity to do so,” Snyder says. “For me, this was a concrete and powerful example of a mother who would benefit greatly from the kind of work we do, because we would help her understand the importance of having those same kinds of responsive and nurturing interactions early and often with her child.” Missed learning opportunities during the very early years, Snyder says, impact K-12 success. One-third of children entering school are unprepared to benefit from the curriculum, and more than half of children cannot read at grade level by fourth grade. In his book, Disrupting Class, Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen estimates “98 percent of education spending occurs after the basic intellectual capacities of children have been mostly determined.” Prekindergarten, with an average national cost of $4,000 per child, starts to look like a bargain next to a Justice Policy Institute estimate that incarcerating juveniles costs more than $148,000 a year per offender. Imagine using some of those resources much earlier, Snyder says.
National Model David Lawrence, a UF alumnus who retired as publisher of The Miami Herald to spearhead early childhood education initiatives, helped recruit Snyder to UF in 2007 as the David Lawrence Jr. Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Studies. Snyder was happy in her position at Vanderbilt University, but Lawrence’s vision intrigued her.
Learning in the very early years supports children when they enter more formal educational environments, such as preschool.
“UF’s vision, not only for the Lawrence endowment, but also for what early childhood studies could become and how UF had aspirations of becoming a national model was very attractive to me,” Snyder says. Lawrence says Snyder is “a truly great human being,” as well as the scientist he was looking for to share science-based methods to use in his work on behalf of children. “I came to understand fully that if you could ever get the early years right, you’d probably have children and then adults with momentum all their lives,” says Lawrence. By 2010 Snyder had transformed the bustling research and education nexus focused on early childhood studies into an official university center. Snyder’s work got a boost in 2011 when Anita Zucker, a UF College of Education alumna and businesswoman who taught elementary school for 11 years, donated
$1 million to endow a professorship in Early Childhood Studies. “Education really is the key to unlocking doors for later learning and success in life,” says Zucker. In 2014, the center gained four faculty as part of the UF Preeminence initiative to be recognized as a top 10 public research university. In November 2014, Zucker gave another $5 million, the state matched the gift, and the center was renamed the Anita Zucker Center for Excellence in Early Childhood Studies. Snyder says she wanted it to be “more than a center in name only,” and the robust research portfolio is evidence that she has reached that goal. To date, the center has attracted almost $16 million in federal research funding. The future of the center also mattered to her. “Now the center has an endowed chair and an endowed professor. I’m pleased about that milestone, because
Explore 27
Early childhood studies researchers often collaborate with caregivers at UF’s on-campus Baby Gator Child Development and Research Centers.
“If we know what quality early learning experiences matter, then another question is how do we support families and early education providers to learn about and use quality practices that are linked to positive child learning outcomes.” — Patricia Snyder
28 Summer 2015
it ensures there will be Lawrence and Zucker professors working side-by-side in perpetuity who will focus on early childhood studies,” Snyder says. “It was important for us to have an ongoing presence in this interdisciplinary area of study at UF.” The research also is energized by collaborations across the country and across campus. Snyder regularly collaborates with colleagues in Tennessee, Florida, Illinois and Virginia on national studies. She and other researchers at the center also draw on the expertise of faculty in UF’s colleges of medicine, nursing, and public health and health professions. Snyder and co-director Maureen Conroy are affiliate faculty members with UF’s Institute for Child Health Policy and Snyder holds an affiliate appointment in pediatrics. Another key collaboration is with UF’s on-campus Baby Gator Child Development and Research Centers,
which serve children from 6 weeks to 5 years old. Baby Gator is one of the “living laboratories” for the center’s research. Snyder and her colleagues look forward to a future collaboration between the center and Baby Gator to create an Early Childhood Collaborative facility, envisioned as an “early learning collaboratory campus,” where interdisciplinary groups of students, researchers and practitioners test early learning curricula and interventions. Its interdisciplinary nature is one of the keys to the center’s work. Children don’t exist in a vacuum, and it takes an interdisciplinary approach to serve the needs of the whole child and family in the context of their communities. “We want to be a national model for connecting research, policy and practice,” Snyder says. “We want our research, training, and outreach activities to help ensure that each and every child has a chance to succeed, just like Sandra’s boys. Every risk profile would suggest that her boys were on potentially adverse learning trajectories when they came into her life. Her story shows the power of evidencebased approaches to early learning.”
Long-Term Payoffs Snyder says there is a compelling need for evidence-based approaches that optimize development and learning in the early years, and she has several studies in progress that focus on how children of all abilities and their caregivers and early learning practitioners acquire skills. “It can be very challenging to conduct applied research in this area, because many people think that early learning is just common sense — that you just need to be nice to young children and all will be well,” Snyder says. “If only it were that simple.”
There are gaps in the existing research that the center is addressing. For example, the center is examining instructional models that support the development and learning of preschoolers with or at risk for disabilities in inclusive classrooms, and caregiver-implemented approaches for infants and toddlers with or at risk for disabilities. So one of Snyder’s research projects focuses on designing, developing and validating interventions teachers and caregivers of these children can use. Once the embedded instruction practices are in place, they will be evaluated to determine whether they lead to improved child outcomes. The laboratories extend beyond classrooms and community settings. Families often invite researchers into their homes to teach techniques like shared reading or how to turn mealtimes and other social exchanges into learning opportunities. In underresourced communities, particularly, these techniques help close the gap for children who reach formal educational settings with a smaller vocabulary or fewer quality early learning experiences than their more advantaged peers. “We take what we know from the science of early childhood development and learning and translate that knowledge into culturally responsive and effective interventions for children and families,” Snyder says. Children and families who receive interventions and families who do not are carefully tracked over time to determine which strategies work and which do not. “If we know what quality early learning experiences matter, then another question is how do we support families and early education providers to learn about and use quality practices that are linked to positive child learning outcomes,” Snyder says.
“Thinking back to the baby in the airport; if we were to implement an intervention that built on the mom’s strengths and supported her to be more responsive to his cues, more interactive with him on a regular basis, we would expect better outcomes for him and for his mother — both in the short term and in the long run — just like those outcomes Sandra reported for her and for her boys.” The center also has become a favored destination for postdoctoral researchers. The U.S. Department of Education recently funded four postdoctoral fellows who are honing their research skills by working alongside UF professors in early childhood studies. It’s not unusual, Snyder says, for a junior researcher to come by her office and say, “You have to come see this video, you have to see the way this mom is interacting with this child. It’s unbelievable. She’s reporting all these changes in her self-confidence about parenting her child.”
Even in the midst of several long-term studies, with the data still out, Snyder often receives anecdotal feedback from former students and families. And when she hears from families with whom she worked early in her career, she sees research in action. “It’s really very gratifying, when you see what the long-term payoffs are,” Snyder says. “Even though they’re not findings, published in the journals, you hear about them by email or occasional phone calls or holiday cards. It is rewarding to know that parents of a child, who is now an adult, recognized the power of what early intervention did, not only for themselves, but also for their children.” Patricia Snyder Professor of Early Childhood Studies patriciasnyder@coe.ufl.edu Related website: http://ceecs.education.ufl.edu/
WITHOUT HIGH-QUALITY EARLY LEARNING, AT-RISK CHILDREN ARE: 25%
More likely to drop out of high school
40%
More likely to become a teen parent
50%
More likely to be placed in special education
60%
More likely to never attend college
70%
More likely to be arrested for a violent crime
SOURCE: The White House.
Explore 29
Hall of Famers
Two UF scientists join Florida Inventors Hall of Fame Gatorade inventor Robert Cade was chosen as one of the inaugural inductees into the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014. This year, UF entomologist Nan-Yao Su and virologist Janet Yamamoto were selected to join him.
Entomologist Nan-Yao Su of UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences has devoted his career to understanding termites and how to thwart them from damaging property. For decades, the standard treatment for termites was to create a barrier around the foundation of a structure with potent chemicals that would kill any termite trying to crawl through it. This worked as long as the chemical retained its potency, but it didn’t do anything to kill the termites in the nest and it was environmentally unsustainable and expensive. But Su came up with a better way. He developed a baiting and treating system that first identified if termites were present in an area, then tricked them into bringing a powerful insecticide back to their nests. Taking advantage of termites’ own biology and behavior, Su’s innovative method of termite control uses small amounts of an insect-specific agent to kill the whole colony, reducing pesticide use by thousands of tons since it was commercially introduced in 1995. “By developing an insecticide that worked slowly, Dr. Su got termites to bring it back to their nest and infect their nest mates,” said Jack Payne, UF’s senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources. “And the delivery system he helped develop is less
30 Summer 2015
destructive and much more environmentally sustainable.” Dow AgroSciences licensed Su’s pest-control technology and worked with him to develop the Sentricon Termite Colony Elimination System. The Sentricon system has found wide acceptance, and Dow AgroSciences has continued to support Su’s work. Since its introduction for commercial use in the mid1990s, the Sentricon system has protected millions of structures, including the White House and the Statue of Liberty. In 1995, Su was honored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for his breakthrough technology, which was described as “the most important advance in termite control in more than 50 years.” In 2000, the Sentricon system won the U.S. government’s Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award. Also, the bait used in the system was the first to be registered under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Reduced Risk Pesticide Initiative. Twelve U.S. patents for Su’s inventions have been licensed to Dow AgroSciences. The university also applies for foreign patents in areas where subterranean termites are active and Dow AgroSciences markets termite control products. Tyler Jones
Termite Terminator
UF’s license with Dow has generated nearly $40 million in royalties over the years that the university has reinvested in new research. Su has contributed much of his royalties to scholarships at the University of Florida, the University of Hawaii and elsewhere. “Dr. Su changed the paradigm of termite protection with a safer, moreeffective approach that has helped countless homeowners and businesses and prevented thousands of tons of dangerous chemicals from entering the environment,” said David Norton, UF’s vice president for research.
Virologist Janet Yamamoto of the UF College of Veterinary Medicine is a hero among cat lovers for helping to discover the deadly feline immunodeficiency virus, or FIV, and developing the first FIV vaccine. Now she’s applying what she’s learned in cats to develop a vaccine for the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, that causes AIDS. Yamamoto and colleague Niels Pedersen at the University of California, Davis, co-discovered FIV in 1986. Yamamoto then spent years pursuing an effective vaccine to prevent the disease. UF and UC-Davis hold joint patents on the vaccine, which UF licensed to Kansas-based Fort Dodge Animal Health in 2002 and is sold as Fel-O-Vax FIV. Yamamoto’s research into FIV eventually led to an understanding that the virus had many similarities to HIV, and her research over the last dozen years has focused on developing an effective HIV vaccine. Her lab uses FIV/feline AIDS as an animal model for human AIDS. She has discovered critical shared characteristics of core FIV and HIV proteins that might be used to create vaccines against most, if not all, strains of HIV.
Yamamoto now is researching ways to use the protective elements of HIV in a feline vaccine. Her research found a small section of one of the HIV proteins that provides better immunity for cats than the equivalent small section of the FIV protein. This section of HIV protein is so similar to FIV that it is usable in a feline vaccine. Since the reverse should also be true, she is looking for FIV protein sequences that trigger a protective immune response in humans. Yamamoto believes tests with people who already have HIV would show whether a vaccine developed from FIV could be useful as therapy and perhaps eventually useful in a human vaccine. “Over the past two decades, she has advanced her basic science achievements and translated them into practical benefit for society, never losing sight of her goal of making a true impact on animal and human health,” said James Lloyd, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine. Her vaccine work has been funded with more than $3.4 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health since 1989. Licensing revenues
from Yamamoto’s discoveries exceed $14 million and it is a testament to her dedication that she has donated most of her personal royalty income back into her research program. “Dr. Yamamoto’s curiosity and determination epitomize the entrepreneurial spirit the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame seeks to recognize,” Norton said. “She has made seminal contributions to our understanding of vaccine development, which has led to a commercially successful vaccine for domestic cats and may well lead to development of an effective vaccine to protect against HIV.”
John Jernigan
Feline Friend
Explore 31
Doctor Inventor Entrepreneur Philanthropist Renaissance Man
R
obert Cade didn’t just lead the team that invented Gatorade. Over the course of nearly 50 years at the University of Florida he served as a valued teacher, researcher, colleague and mentor. He also left a legacy of generosity, endowing professorships in nephrology and physiology in the UF College of Medicine and supporting many charities in Gainesville and beyond.