Elsio Wunder awarded BARD grant to improve understanding of costly disease
A dairy cow on Horsebarn Hill. (Sean Flynn/UConn Photo)
Assistant professor Elsio Wunder, DVM, Ph.D., has been awarded a three-year, $570,000 grant to improve diagnostics for bovine leptospirosis, a bacterial disease that can infect cattle and spread to humans.
The award comes from the U.S.-Israel Binational Agricultural Research and Development Fund, or BARD. BARD is a competitive funding program for mutually beneficial, mission-oriented, strategic and applied research of agricultural problems, jointly conducted by American and Israeli scientists. Wunder will be collaborating with UConn assistant research professor Camila Hamond, Ph.D.; Northern Arizona University research scientist Nathan E. Stone, Ph.D.; and Kimron Veterinary Institute researcher and department head Shlomo Blum, DVM, Ph.D.
The project, entitled "Novel Protein Antigens as a Path to Improve Surveillance and Diagnostics of Bovine Leptospirosis," aims to significantly improve cattle ranchers' detection of leptospirosis, a disease caused by the bacteria Leptospira.
The disease can be tricky to diagnose, since infected cattle often do not show pronounced symptoms. Farmers may first notice something is wrong when their female cows start having reproductive issues.
"To identify those animals in a herd is sometimes complicated," says Wunder. "Some animals, they actually get a chronic form of the infection, so their kidneys are colonized - they don't necessarily have clinical signs of the disease, but they are secreting lepto into the environment."
Ranchers may perform blood tests on their herd, but existing tests are based on leptospirosis research from the 1950s and 1960s, says Wunder. Today's lepto landscape is different, with new strains constantly emerging.
Wunder has previously received NIH funding for his work on developing a new leptospirosis vaccine, using proteins that more closely match current circulating strains of the bacteria. His patented vaccine uses four proteins to protect against a wide range of lepto, in contrast to current inoculations which only include a few strains.
This project builds on that work, while specifically focusing on diagnostic tests instead of vaccines.
"Through the work on the vaccine, I was able to identify several biologically relevant protein candidates," says Wunder. "Because those candidates are important to infection and protection, we thought they could also be important candidates for diagnostics."
Current diagnostic mechanisms test for each strain of Leptospira individually, meaning that "20, 30, 40 antigens need to be used for a serum test" for a given blood sample, says Wunder.
In contrast, his vision is a single test that uses just one or two proteins to identify infected animals, regardless of the strain they have been infected with.
"Then we can quickly treat these animals and separate them from the herd," he says.
Leptospirosis can cause major economic losses for farmers, as it kills cattle or harms their reproductive and milk-producing capacity. It also poses a threat to humans, domestic animals, and wildlife, who can contract it from exposure to urine from infected cows, such as through environmental contamination. Left untreated, it can be fatal.
If you don't look, you don't see it.
The disease is of particular concern in developing countries which lack adequate sanitation infrastructure and access to healthcare. Because of its status as a neglected disease or "disease of poverty," leptospirosis is less likely to receive research funding and attention. This can create a vicious cycle as the bacterium continues to multiply and infect different animals, without adequate safety mechanisms in place to protect animal, human, and environmental health.
"If you don't look, you don't see it, right?" says Wunder. "So it becomes this hidden thing that could potentially become a major problem."
The idea that lepto isn't a risk in the United States is a misconception, he says - one he is working tirelessly to combat.
"If you look at the science, you can see that not only is it here, but things are changing," he says. "New, more problematic strains are coming up. … And a lot of the time, we don't know the risks they pose to human health."
Recently, Wunder says, leptospirosis cases have risen in New York, Chicago, and California. He foresees the problem intensifying in the coming years, as a warming climate, more rain, and increased social inequality provide ideal conditions for bacteria like Leptospira to proliferate.
Cattle all over the United States do contract lepto, including strains in the vaccine and new strains. Working with farmers in Connecticut, he has found cows - even vaccinated ones - excreting the bacteria into the environment.
This points to a need for both more effective vaccines and more effective tests. Wunder's lab is hard at work on both.
