Fulbright scholar Ryan Awori works with the Department of Microbiology to research new methods to cure Malaria-like diseases.
Visiting Fulbright scholar Ryan Awori established strong collaborative ties to the College of Arts and Sciences while working on his PhD approximately three years ago. As these ties developed, an epidemic in his home nation of Kenya heightened the urgency of his research.
UT Professor of Microbiology Heidi Goodrich-Blair took interest in Awori’s thesis research under her colleague Professor Helge Bode, now director of the Natural Products in Organismic Interactions Department at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology.
Awori and Goodrich-Blair collaborated on a project that resulted in a successful publication, then worked together on a subsequent project that became the basis for Awori’s Fulbright research proposal. This foundational project was also recently concluded and published. They were planning the Fulbright project when the epidemic arose.
“During the conception of this Fulbright proposal, there was a leishmaniasis (a protozoan disease like malaria) epidemic in Northern Kenya,” said Awori, who earned his PhD in biology in 2021 at Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany. “Exacerbating this was that current medicines for leishmaniasis and protozoan diseases are archaic and very toxic because they are not precise.”
His work with Goodrich-Blair and Farrah Bashey-Visser, a senior lecturer in biology at Indiana University, investigated the ecology and functioning of a very precise kind of antimicrobial called tailocins. These would have little to no toxicity if developed into a clinical therapy.
“This inspired me to work on a way to transform tailocins into cures for malaria-like diseases,” said Awori.
Awori’s time at UT has led to further success in creating new medications to fight these diseases and improve lives around the world.
“We have been able to prove that our concept—that a Xenorhabdus tailocin platform can be used to develop precision antimicrobial drugs—by using tailocins to very precisely and selectively destroy bacteria that cause multidrug resistant urinary tract infections,” said Awori. “These findings have not only encouraged Professor Goodrich-Blair and I in our pursuit of an on-demand platform for precision antimicrobials, but it has also yielded novel insights into how to attain my ultimate goal of developing safe and effective therapies for neglected tropical diseases, some of which, according to the CDC, are now endemic in southern states of the US.”
Read about Awori’s Fulbright work
by Randall Brown