Center of Excellence in Microbiome Sciences

Maryland has one of the most densely populated areas of commercial poultry in the U.S. that brings an estimated $1.6 billion in economic impact to the state each year.

Protecting this important agricultural resource from infectious disease, including devastating outbreaks of avian mycoplasma and highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), requires vigilance, good science and cooperation between poultry growers, extension agents and policymakers.

At the University of Maryland, one of the region’s top experts in infectious poultry diseases is expanding his scientific toolkit, harnessing the use and application of advanced molecular diagnostic and genotyping techniques for the surveillance, prevention, and control of pathogens like HPAI.

Mostafa Ghanem, an assistant professor of veterinary medicine in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, is using these new genomic tools to improve the current understanding of different risk factors controlling the emergence, evolution, spread and persistence of different pathogens within animal production systems and different environments.

He works closely with state diagnostic laboratories, federal agencies, and academic and private industry partners to achieve a common goal of improving the health and wellbeing of animals and humans.

Ghanem is active in the University of Maryland Center of Excellence in Microbiome Sciences, launched in 2023 with a $500K Impact Award from the university’s Grand Challenges Grants program.

—Story by Tom Ventsias, UMIACS communications group

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has awarded two University of Maryland researchers a $350,000 grant to advance new treatments for female reproductive system conditions.

In a two-year study, Assistant Professor Hannah Zierden and Professor and Chair Peter Kofinas, both of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, will collaborate with the FDA Centers of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation to explore the potential of absorbable polymer devices to prevent intrauterine adhesions. The work could lead to technologies to treat endometriosis, which impacts over 10% of reproductive-age women, causing chronic pain and sometimes leading to infertility, as well as other women’s health issues.

Post-surgical inflammation can lead to tissue adhesions, when organ surfaces stick to each other, potentially evolving into a life-threatening condition. Available treatments, including polymer-based devices, are often ineffective.

“Many of the existing regulatory science tools fail to focus on how novel medical devices will interact in the female body,” said Zierden, a member of the UMD Center of Excellence in Microbiome Sciences. “By examining polymer degradation in the context of female reproductive tract tissues and hormones, our work will establish important benchmarks for the translation of absorbable polymer devices for use in gynecologic and obstetric surgeries, with the potential to address existing disparities in women’s health.”

Zierden is an expert in nanotherapies, a type of medical treatment that uses tiny particles (nanoparticles) to deliver medicine directly to the cells that need it, while Kofinas is an expert in functional polymers for medical applications; together they will test advanced sprayable polymers in the female reproductive tract to evaluate their safety and biocompatibility.

In addition to endometriosis, the work could benefit those experiencing uterine fibroids and gynecologic cancer, among other conditions, as well as patients undergoing gender confirmation surgeries, hysterectomies, myomectomy and other procedures.

“This is a significant milestone in our efforts to address critical gaps in women’s health care,” Kofinas said. “Our work will focus on creating polymer devices that are safe, effective and tailored to the unique physiological conditions of the female reproductive system, ultimately aiming to enhance the quality of life for many women.”

—Story by Daniela Benites, Maryland Today

Leafy greens like spinach and lettuce are among the most nutrient-packed foods we can eat—and some of the most prone to make us miserable, or worse. The pathogenic bacterium Escherichia coli O157:H7 causes millions of illnesses globally each year, health authorities say, including thousands of severe infections that can lead to kidney failure and even death. The infections are often contracted from contaminated produce irrigated with water that contains animal waste runoff or grown in open fields where intruding wildlife leave feces.

To help address this challenge, a University of Maryland food safety expert is conducting microbial research to determine best practices for commercial growers who find evidence of wildlife feces, or scat, in their fields.

Shirley Micallef, a professor in the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, recently concluded a series of field trials on Maryland’s Eastern Shore that examined how E. coli moves from scat to a lettuce crop following a rain event.

Micallef aims to determine a specific safety radius for a “no harvest” zone if farmers find evidence of wildlife intrusion, data that will be useful for mid-Atlantic produce growers and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Due to variance of wildlife, soil composition, farming scale and climate, the data and metrics in place for California may not be suited for Maryland, Micallef said.

The results from the research, which involved other faculty and students in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, were recently published in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science.

This project, Micallef said, is part of the work she does in the University of Maryland Center of Excellence in Microbiome Sciences, launched last year with a $500K Impact Award from the university’s Grand Challenges Grants program.

“This matches well with the center’s goal of research, education and outreach that is focused on the concept of ‘One Health’—wherein interconnected microbiomes affect the health and well-being of plants, the environment, animals and humans equally,” Micallef said. “They all interact with each other at some level.”

-Story by Tom Ventsias, UMIACS communications group

You could say that a gut feeling guided Brantley Hall’s career path.

After earning his Ph.D. in genetics, bioinformatics and computational biology from Virginia Tech in 2016, Hall began studying something that’s part of every person on the planet: the gut microbiome. Trillions of microorganisms form communities in the gastrointestinal tract that are vital to human health, but much is still unknown about their intricacies.

Now an assistant professor of cell biology and molecular genetics with a joint appointment in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS), Hall works to demystify the process of digestion.

“I’m extremely happy to have chosen this field,” said Hall, who is a core faculty member in both the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology and University of Maryland Center of Excellence in Microbiome Sciences. 

“It’s rewarding because so many people can relate to and engage with my research. Even your choice of lunch has a huge impact on your gut microbiome.”

Hall’s lab studies the human gut microbiome and its links to medical ailments such as inflammatory bowel disease. His team developed a wearable device that measures gas produced by gut microbes—a tool that, until now, never existed. By taking these measurements in real time, Hall hopes to shed light on a range of gastrointestinal symptoms that can hamper a person’s quality of life.

Gut microbiome research has a wide range of applications in medicine. A recent study led by Hall identified the gut microbial enzyme responsible for making urine yellow.

“This enzyme discovery finally unravels the mystery behind urine’s yellow color,” Hall said. “It’s remarkable that an everyday biological phenomenon went unexplained for so long, and our team is excited to be able to explain it.”

Hall and his collaborators believe this enzyme, called bilirubin reductase, could be linked to jaundice—a condition that leads to yellowing of the skin and eyes—and plan to do a clinical trial in infants to test their hypothesis.

The gut microbiome also shares links with allergies, diabetes, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, Parkinson’s disease and many more conditions. Despite its importance to human health, gut microbiome research is still in its infancy. It didn’t take off until the early 2000s, with the rise of genomic sequencing and oxygen-free chambers that allowed microbes to be grown in a lab.

“Scientists have known about the importance of the gut microbiome for a long time, but there was just no one way to grow or measure the microbes,” Hall said. “We knew stuff was happening in people’s guts and that microbes were responsible, but beyond that, there wasn’t much we could do.”

While Hall’s lab grows and studies microbes in isolation, his team aims to tackle a bigger challenge: figuring out how to study the activity of microbial communities in a live human body.

“We need to measure what microbes are doing in real time—that’s the big gap in the field,” Hall said. “What we need are new tools that can measure gut microbes.”

Looking back at the last seven years, Hall is glad he followed his gut and pursued this field of research. He said gut microbiome research holds enormous potential for improving people’s health and well-being—and researchers are just getting started.

“I love it,” Hall said. “It’s a great field, and I feel like we’re working toward something that is going to make a difference.”

—This story was originally published by the University of Maryland Department of Cell Biology & Molecular Genetics