Center News - Washington National Primate Research Center

Dr Duran-Struuck Joins Core Faculty

WaNPRC Director Dr. Deborah Fuller today welcomed Dr Raimon Duran-Struuk as a core faculty member of the Washington National Primate Research Center. Dr Duran-Struuk is the Chair and a Professor in the UW Department of Comparative Medicine (DCM).

A passionate advocate for research animals, Dr Duran-Struuk says he’s inspired by the professionalism and care of people in research and the quality of our work with nonhuman primates. He says he’s “very excited” to contribute to advancing human and animal health.

“I’ve been working with NHPs for a long time, and I’ve always thought NHPs are an extremely valuable model to leverage our discoveries for safety and efficacy,” he said. “At end of the day what I tell my residents is that what we do here is to enhance discoveries. Think of a child w leukemia or a patient who depends on our discoveries. To me, that translates to being a small part of a big team that hopefully will be part of a big discovery.”

As an experienced lab animal veterinarian, researcher and instructor to medical students, Dr Duran-Struuk specializes in lab animal medicine and transplant immunology. He has published studies about immunotherapies for transplant rejection and Graft Versus Host Disease, which is a complication that can result from transplants of stem cells to treat blood disorders.

“I’m thrilled to welcome Raimon on board,” said Director Deborah Fuller. “He brings a unique and highly impactful research program in transplant immunology that will further broaden the expertise of our world-renowned Gene Therapy and Regenerative Unit. As chair of DCM, Raimon also plays a crucial role in supporting all non-NHP animal research at UW and I very much value his expertise and efforts to support our common goals.”

Dr Duran-Struuk received his BS is biochemistry from Tufts University before earning his DVM there. He received his PhD in Immunology from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. Prior to joining DCM, he was an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathobiology and a Director of Regulatory Affairs for University Lab Animal Resources at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to that, he held clinical and teaching positions at Rowan University, Tufts and Columbia University Medical Center.

Discoveries Drive Pandemic Preparedness and Economic Stability

Scientists and our public health infrastructure are critical for pandemic preparedness. Zika virus, a mosquito-borne disease with devastating effects on fetal brain development, continues to present a significant public health threat with far-reaching consequences for the U.S. economy and society. The virus gained global attention during the 2015-2018 epidemic, which was found to cause severe birth defects and disrupted birth rates and economies, across the Americas.

WaNPRC Associate Director of Research Kristina Adams Waldorf has been pivotal in identifying the threats posed by the Zika virus, and her findings are a perfect example of why research is essential to protect the U.S. public health and our economy. Dr Adams Waldorf’s research conclusively proved that Zika virus caused fetal brain injury, which reduced alternate theories and focused public health efforts.

Although the Zika virus epidemic began in Brazil, it wasn’t long before cases began spreading in Florida and Texas. This is why studying viruses in faraway places that can travel in the blood of an infected person and jump into mosquito populations in the U.S. is so important.

In early 2016, the news about Zika virus had reached mainstream newspapers in the U.S. Then, in the summer of 2016, the virus was found to be spreading locally in areas of Miami. Seemingly overnight, key voting populations and economic drivers in Florida were galvanized to support the scientific research for Zika virus.

“I was being contacted by real estate developers in Florida, who were seeing the value for housing cratering in areas of Miami near the Zika virus outbreak,” Adams Waldorf said. “Grandparents in Florida began donating to my research program, because their adult children were canceling visits to Florida based on fear of acquiring Zika virus.”

This fear was sufficient to cripple real estate and tourism in Florida, creating a crisis directly linking the virus with economic disruptions. A part of the economy that employs more than a million people and accounts for more than a billion dollars in economic activity had officials deeply worried. A decline in birth rates and an increase in medication abortion in Central and South America reflected the same worries of many American women and young families, who were trying to get pregnant.

The Zika virus outbreak also led to one extremely unusual incident in which the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency approached Dr. Adams Waldorf about the threat of bioterrorism from Zika.

“The CIA was concerned at the time that bad actors might be intentionally spreading Zika virus in the U.S. to create social and economic havoc in Florida and Texas,” Adams Waldorf said. “But this threat isn’t a complex international spy mystery. It’s about sick people getting on planes. This is why studying viruses that cause fetal birth defects is so important for our national security. They might seem unimportant and faraway, but they are literally in our backyard.”

The Adams Waldorf Lab is now studying the ways that fetal brain injury from Zika and other viruses can be detected during a pregnancy, which was a flash point for women who wanted to get pregnant or were currently pregnant during the Zika epidemic. Reassuring pregnant women that their pregnancies were healthy would have gone a long way to bolstering public health during this epidemic.

Government officials chose to spray areas of Miami, where Zika virus infected mosquitoes had been identified to eliminate the danger that it posed to Florida citizens. Fortunately, Zika virus was eliminated in Florida through these efforts, but the risk remains for a new epidemic.

Zika virus is now present in mosquitos and other animals throughout South and Central America, Dr. Adams Waldorf said. Once there are enough children in these populations that lack Zika virus immunity, because they weren’t alive or didn’t get infected in the 2015-2018 epidemic, there may be a new Zika virus epidemic.

The Adams Waldorf Laboratory is also identifying other viruses that could wreak havoc on public health and the economy. For example, the Oropouche virus is spread by midges and mosquitos and can be passed from a pregnant woman to their fetus. Oropouche has been associated with birth defects and stillbirths, similar to Zika. But the overall risk is still unknown and needs further study.

Studying birth defects caused by viruses is central to both public health and national security. But that can’t happen without researchers doing the basic science that will give public policymakers the information they need to make informed decisions.

Cuts to Research Funding Threaten Medical Breakthroughs

WaNPRC Director Deborah Fuller and University of Washington Assistant Professor of Microbiology Patrick Mitchell team up in this article in The Conversation to explain how funding cuts affect medical breakthroughs.

They explain how the termination of hundreds of active research grants could mean fewer clinical trials, fewer new treatments and fewer lifesaving drugs. Labs will likely shut down, jobs will be lost, and the process of discovery will stall.

Grant to Study Colored Light for Pain Management

Jim Kuchenbecker and Jay Neitz are part of a collaborative team that has been awarded a highly competitive, nearly $8 million grant provided by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). The grant will fund groundbreaking research titled: “Neural Mechanisms of Colored Light-Driven Analgesia.” The group’s research explores the use of colored light to modulate pain pathways in the brain. This work represents an innovative approach to managing pain without the use of opioids, contributing to a vital area of research aimed at addressing the ongoing opioid crisis. The project is set to span five years. It will involve a multidisciplinary team of investigators, including Jay Neitz, PhD, vision neuroscientist, and Jim Kuchenbecker, PhD, bioengineer, and vision scientist at the University of Washington and two other institutions, Norman Taylor, MD, PhD at the University of Utah and Matt Mauck at the University of North Carolina. This grant, a part of the NIH HEAL Initiative, supports collaborative approaches to generate new mechanistic knowledge to improve pain management.

In clinical studies, colored light has been shown to be more effective in ameliorating pain than white light when compared at equal brightness. This implicates color-opponent circuitry in the primate retina in the neural mechanism of light-driven analgesia. Because of the unique mechanisms responsible for carrying color information in humans shared only by other primates, nonhuman primate research has been essential color research. During the last century, it was assumed that the neurons in the retina carrying color information were involved in conscious color perception, mediating the sensations of red, green, blue, and yellow. However, in 2005, Dennis Dacey and colleagues at the University of Washington discovered that retinal ganglion cells involved in non-image-forming visual capacities, including synchronizing our internal biological clock to the external day, are color-opponent making them sunrise-sunset detectors sensitive to the change in the color of the sky from blue to orange when the sun is at the horizon.

Since then, Kuchenbecher, Neitz, and their colleagues in the UW Department of Ophthalmology have discovered that multiple types of neurons in the primate retina carry color information integrating environmental light cues and relaying them to various brain centers. Their influence extends far beyond circadian entrainment, encompassing sleep, mood, cognition, metabolism, and overall health. Understanding these diverse roles has significant implications for therapies targeting light exposure to improve health and well-being. These include influencing pain perception and sensitivity. This may make sense in terms of primate evolution when being able to endure pain may have been critical to survival. After the sun goes down, an injured primate ancestor exposed to the elements in the great outdoors is subject to many life-threatening hazards, including hypothermia, starvation, or being killed by predators. Seeing the color of the sunset might indicate to an injured primate ancestor that getting back to safety is more important than focusing on the pain they are experiencing. Signals from color-sensitive ganglion cells may communicate with ascending pain centers to ameliorate pain until the animal is safe at home. The proposed research will illuminate the underlying mechanisms and has the promise to provide new strategies for controlling pain using light.

Do You Need a Measles Booster?

WaNPRC Director Dr Deborah Fuller spoke with Everyday Health about the efficacy of MMR vaccines and whether or not adults need a booster.

The current measles outbreak that has killed at least two people so far in Texas and New Mexico were in unvaccinated people, one child, one adult. The Centers for Disease Control says the two-dose regimen of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine is 97% effective against measles.

“Most people who have received two doses of the MMR vaccine do not need a measles booster shot, but some specific individuals may benefit,” Dr Fuller said, adding that it’s vital to know your vaccination and health history, and whether you may benefit from an MMR vaccine booster if you’re in a vulnerable group, such as people who only had one does of the MMR vaccine or who were vaccinated when a less effective vaccine was used.

The CDC says measles does not have an antiviral treatment, and vaccines are the best defense against infection.

New Paper: HIV May Increase Risk of Prolonged Zika Infections

A new paper co-authored by three WaNPRC researchers in Frontiers in Immunology indicates that people with HIV may be at greater risk for prolonged Zika virus (ZIKV) infections, and that people vulnerable to mosquito-borne illnesses like Zika would benefit from protections like vaccines.

The paper, “Persistent innate immune dysfunction and ZIKV replication in the gastrointestinal tract during SIV infection in pigtail macaques,” suggests that people living with HIV may be at greater risk for prolonged Zika virus infections and that the virus stayed in the body longer.

Dr. Megan O’Connor, Director Deb Fuller and former WaNPRC researcher and current affiliate Dr. Michael Gale contributed to the paper. The study looked at nonhuman primates (NHPs) co-infected with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) and Zika, the disease involved in a well-known outbreak in the Americas in 2015-2016 that infected tens of thousands of people and caused symptoms ranging from a rash and fever to microencephaly in babies (an abnormally small head), and even death. In the study NHPs had a harder time fighting off Zika, and the Zika virus stayed in their body longer, especially in places like the gut.

They wrote: “Collectively, these findings uniquely suggest that untreated SIV infection may promote inflammatory cellular innate responses and create a state of persistent immune activation that contributes to prolonged ZIKV viremia and persistence in the gastrointestinal tract. Furthermore, these results suggest that people living with HIV and other immunocompromised individuals could be at higher risk for prolonged ZIKV infection, potentially extending the window of ZIKV transmission. These insights highlight the importance of including people living with HIV in strategies for deploying vaccines and treatments against ZIKV.”

In other words, this indicates that people living with HIV, who have weaker immune systems, might have a harder time fighting off Zika, and it could stay in their bodies for a longer time. The researchers said this means public health officials need to make sure such people get treatments, such as vaccines, to help them fight off Zika more effectively.

You can read the entire paper, here.

Dr. Fuller was appointed director of WaNPRC in late last year.

Dr O’Connor was appointed in February to the University of Washington faculty as Assistant Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology. She is a Core Scientist in the WaNPRC Infectious Disease and Translational Medicine Unit and focuses on HIV viral co-infections with the goal of improving treatment and vaccine strategies for people living with HIV and other immunocompromised people.

Director for Research Lands Zika Papers in The Lancet

WaNPRC’s Interim Assoc. Director for Research, Kristina Adams Waldorf collaborated on a four-part series with other researchers in The Lancet Infectious Diseases and The Lancet Microbe. The series identified key research priorities needed to detect and mitigate the threat of future mosquito-borne Zika virus outbreaks.

Dr Adams Waldorf is a leading researcher on Zika virus, which emerged in the Americas in 2015 and resulted in a devastating epidemic of infants born with small heads (microcephaly) and other severe congenital malformations.

The four manuscripts focus on: Zika research priorities for preparedness and response, vaccines and monoclonal antibodies, non-human primate models of Zika virus, and sharing of specimens and data to accelerate Zika research and development.

In the paper in which she was the senior author, the role of NHP models in research and developing zika countermeasures, she notes that Zika virus remains a threat to global pregnancies, is now endemic in 92 countries, and can be found in mosquitos in another 60 countries.

Dr Adams Waldorf writes that developing therapeutics against Zika requires nonhuman primate research to mirror the physiology of human pregnancies. NHP pregnancy is “remarkably similar to human pregnancy” she writes, from the interface between the fetus and mother to the fetal development.

“NHPs have emerged as the gold standard model for understanding the pathogenesis of ZIKV infection in humans and human pregnancy. Accelerating research and discovery on ZIKV will continue to rely on the availability of diverse non-pregnant and pregnant NHP models that can address different aspects of viral pathophysiology,” she writes.

Another paper in the series notes that there are no licensed Zika vaccines or monoclonal antibodies currently available, which means world’s populations, particularly those who may become pregnant, are unprotected from Zika transmission, infection, and disease.

Dr Adams-Waldorf’s paper can be found here: Role of non-human primate models in accelerating research and developing countermeasures against Zika virus infection published in The Lancet Microbe. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(24)00298-2/fulltext

The other papers are:

Zika virus vaccines and monoclonal antibodies: a priority agenda for research and development: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(24)00750-3/fulltext

Zika virus: advancing a priority research agenda for preparedness and response: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(24)00794-1/fulltext

Specimen and data sharing to advance research and development on Zika virus: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(24)00325-2/fulltext

Why I Work in Animal Research

This Guest Director’s Blog is by Mark Walton, PhD.
He is a senior research scientist at WaNPRC in the Neuroscience core. We welcomed his timely thoughts in a climate in which it’s valuable to understand the importance of animal research in advancing human and animal health.

In January of 2002, my first child, a son, was born. When he was still only minutes old, the doctor handed me our newborn child and said, “Here’s your son.” The joy I felt in that moment was beyond description, and I couldn’t help speculating about what the future would hold. What sort of life would he lead? Would I be up to the task of preparing this utterly helpless person for the independence of adulthood? I desperately hoped that he would one day find a career path that he would find fulfilling. I thought, too, about the fact that this newly arrived human being that had been entrusted to our care would likely outlive us by at least a couple of decades. I hoped that he would one day find love so that he would always have a family that he could trust.

As I held him in my arms for the first time, I could see that his skin had a bluish tint, but I wasn’t worried at first. We had been warned that newborn babies often take a little while to get their natural color, as their delicate little lungs begin to supply oxygen for the first time. I was so engrossed in the tiny miracle that rested in my arms that I failed to notice the growing concern that must have shown on the faces of the medical professionals that surrounded me. My own concern began to grow slowly, an empty feeling in my gut as I waited for the bluish tint to his skin to turn pink. Instead, his color worsened until a nurse gently took him from me. Soon a doctor explained to me that our son was having trouble breathing because his lungs were not as mature as they should have been. My wife and I were told that he had been taken to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), where they would help him to breathe. The technical term for this is respiratory distress syndrome.

That night my wife and I somehow managed to get to sleep. In the morning, the doctor told us that our baby had a “rough night.” She explained that normal lungs produce something called surfactant, which essentially keeps the lungs from sticking together when we exhale. To understand the need for surfactant she asked us to imagine trying to inflate a balloon that was wet on the inside. Our baby’s lungs, she said, were not mature enough to produce the surfactant that he needed. During the night, when he tried to inhale, one of his lungs stuck together. This ripped a hole in the lung, which caused it to collapse.

I listened, doing my best to show a strength that I didn’t feel. I knew this would be even worse for my wife, who was listening to the same horror story after giving birth to a baby. After the doctor finished, I stepped out into the hallway. The moment the door closed the fear that I had so carefully hidden came pouring out like flood water from a collapsed dam. In the hallway of the maternity ward – which should have been filled with joy – I sank to the floor, unable to stand. I wondered if our son was going to die without being held by his mother even once. I must have been quite a sight: a six-foot-three man crying uncontrollably on the floor while new parents walked past me with their healthy babies.

Later that morning, my wife and I were told that we could go to see our son. The doctor led us to the NICU but paused before opening the door. “I need to tell you what you are going to see,” she said. “Your son has a little ‘boo-boo’.” She used those words to describe what turned out to be a hole in our baby’s chest, into which a tube had been inserted. I remember watching the little drops of our child’s blood moving back and forth inside the semi-transparent tubing.

I couldn’t help wondering what our tiny son, just one day old, thought of the world that he’d entered. To him, it must surely be a place of endless pain and suffering. He hadn’t known comfort or love, except for those few precious minutes, in my arms. I would have done anything – even volunteered to be tortured to death – to take away his suffering and heal him.

In the days that followed, our son received an artificial surfactant, developed through years of research. It worked like a miracle. Soon, we were able to bring him home. That was 2002. Today he is a college student with a brilliant mind, studying astrophysics. He got married last summer, and I can honestly say that I have never seen a happier couple.

This miracle happened because of decades of animal research. Thanks to this research, scientists and medical doctors know a lot about how lungs work. Some of the most important work was done by studying pig lungs – experiments that could not have been performed on humans. Thanks to medical research involving animals, scientists learned the crucial role that surfactants play, and they learned how to make the artificial version that saved our son’s life. Before trying it on human babies, scientists first tested it on prematurely born monkeys. All medical treatments undergo this critical phase of testing, ensuring that new treatments are safe before they are given to humans – or, more personally, our children.

In 1963, President John F Kennedy’s newborn son tragically died of the very same problem that nearly killed our son. At that time, medical science had not advanced enough to save him. Medical research, including research involving monkeys, is the only reason that our son survived. For us, this is not a political issue; it is the difference between life and death. Yet as I write this, countless other families are not so fortunate. At this very moment, thousands of parents are watching helplessly as their children suffer and die of diseases that we have yet to treat. For them, the horror that I felt for a few short days will become an emotional wound that never heals.

It’s normal in a democracy for well-meaning, patriotic people to disagree about many things. The need to spare our fellow human beings the indescribable horror of losing a loved one should not be one of them. If there is one thing that we all should agree on, it is that we must support medical research. Every single person reading these words should remember that one day it might be your life that hangs in the balance, or the life of someone that you love. It is my great hope that we continue to support medical research so that an effective treatment will be found before that day comes for your family.

Orsborn Paper: Neural Information Could Impact Brain-Computer Interfaces

Neuroscience core scientist Amy Orsborn published a new paper in the high-impact publication Nature Neuroscience in which she, as lead author, reports that, “Neural populations are dynamic but constrained,” as the title reads.

“Our brains evolved to help us rapidly learn new things. But anyone who has put in hours of practice to perfect their tennis serve, only to reach a plateau, can attest that our brains aren’t infinitely flexible,” the paper begins. “New work shows that patterns of neural activity over time — the temporal dynamics of neural populations — cannot change rapidly, suggesting that neural activity dynamics may both reflect and constrain how the brain performs computations.”

The findings, Dr Orsborn says, has the potential to impact how brain-computer interfaces are developed that could help provide people the use of artificial limbs.

In the study, Orsborn and her colleagues used micro- electrocorticography recordings in two male monkeys to map how their eye movements related to their arm movements. The upshot is the movements mapped in the brain across different regions, which advances our understanding of how our brain works when we do everyday tasks like reaching toward things we’re not looking directly at.

“These insights…reveal opportunities to leverage these signals to enhance future brain-computer interfaces,” she writes.

Dr Orsborn is one of three University of Washington faculty members who recently received fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Sloan Fellowships honor early-career researchers whose achievements mark them among the next generation of scientific leaders. Each fellow will receive $75,000 to apply toward research endeavors.

New Project Coordination Unit Created to Improve Processes, Outcomes

WaNPRC Director Deb Fuller has announced the formation of a new Project Coordination Unit (PCU) that will assists with managing both new and existing research studies and that aims to improve communication and collaboration within the center as well as with affiliates.

That unit has already started tweaking processes, including managing the way new projects start. You’ll find more information on the process here.

Collaboration can improve in ways that make work life more clear and less frenetic for researchers and veterinarians alike. While the PCU team is in the early stages of creating ways to improve processes, one first step is assigning a project coordinator to each research project who can provide transparency and assistance to researchers. That coordinator will shepherd researchers through the whole process to avoid things like surprise timelines or preventable delays.

The coordinator will also help research teams with accessing additional resources, including equipment and connections with both internal and external collaborators.

Not only will the PCU focus on improving the experience for researchers at the center and success of research studies, it aims to improve the wellbeing for the people working to take care of our animals. The pursuit of transparency can improve that experience by ensuring that research objectives, clinical best practices, and BMS goals all align.

Until the team can build out processes, researchers or others with requests or questions can contact the Project Coordination Unit at: u_wanprc_pcprojects@uw.edu

This Guest Director’s Blog is by Mark Walton, PhD. He is a senior research scientist at WaNPRC in the Neuroscience core. We welcomed his timely thoughts in a climate in which it’s valuable to understand the importance of animal research in advancing human and animal health.

This Guest Director’s Blog is by Mark Walton, PhD.
He is a senior research scientist at WaNPRC in the Neuroscience core. We welcomed his timely thoughts in a climate in which it’s valuable to understand the importance of animal research in advancing human and animal health.