New funding for research on parasitic eye disease

Brooke Anderson-White, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in pathology, has received a grant from the Knights Templar Eye Foundation Inc. for research to develop vitally needed new treatments for severe eye infections caused by the Toxoplasma gondii parasite.

The parasite infects as many as a billion people worldwide, many of whom have no symptoms. However, it can cause severe problems in those with weakened immune systems or in infants infected during pregnancy, leading to the condition toxoplasmic retinochoroiditis. Infected children can develop severe vision impairment and blindness as a result of retinal scarring caused by the disease. Toxoplasmic retinochoroiditis is a major source of visual impairment in the United States.

The drugs currently used to treat infected pregnant women are only 50 percent effective, and those used for infected infants often result in hypersensitivity, Anderson-White said. Reactivation of the infection is also common with current treatments, she said.

Anderson-White and her colleagues in the laboratory of Matthew Bogyo, PhD, associate professor of pathology, are studying the signaling and molecular components of the process used by the parasite to invade cells in the body. She plans to use a chemical probe to explore the factors that regulate parasite invasion, with an eye to developing potential new drug targets.

Knights Templar is an international philanthropic order affiliated with the Freemasonry. The group will provide Anderson-White with $33,198 in research support.

Provided by Stanford University Medical Center