The Conservation Medicine Program
for the VCU Inger and Walter Rice Environmental Center

RESEARCH

Diseases of Reptiles and amphibians

 Joy Ware, PhD, Professor of Pathology and Affiliate Professor of Biology, and her graduate students are conducting research focused on monitoring, evaluating, and understanding the relationship between diseases and abnormalities of amphibians and reptiles, human health, and environmental conditions.  Amphibians and reptiles are sensitive to environmental conditions and can serve as bioindicators for some potential human health risks.  These investigations can thus contribute to both better conservation of wildlife and improvement of some conditions affecting human health.   Among the on-going studies are assessment of disease and malformations among amphibians in urban and non-urban locations, eastern box turtle relocation techniques and health monitoring, external skin lesions and diseases of snakes at three area national wildlife refuges, and the interaction between lizards and tick nymphs and ticks, in relation to possible effects on Lyme Disease.

Histopathology of Wildlife Diseases

Davis Massey, DDS, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pathology, assists investigators in the Conservation Medicine Program with sample preparation, interpretation of histopathology of lesions and organs from ill wildlife, and photography of the histological specimens.

The Search for new Avian Hepadnaviruses

Hepadnaviruses are small double stranded DNA viruses that infect and replicate in the liver, resulting in infections, and rarely, liver cancer.  Hepatitis B is significant human pathogen.  Because the hepatitis B core protein is a powerful immunogen, this core protein has been used as a vaccine carrier and adjuvant.  However, use of this particular protein as the core of a vaccine for people may be compromised by the fact that many people already have antibodies to hepatitis B, and this diminishes the activity of the core.  In addition, because screening for anti-core antibodies is one of the methods used to eliminate HBV from the blood supply, wide-spread use of hepatitis B core protein in the vaccines would negate the usefulness of this screening assay.

Dr. Darrel Peterson, Professor of Biochemistry, is searching for additional non-human hepadnaviral core proteins as a vaccine carrier.  The avian hepadnavirus core protein may be the best tool, as avian and mammalian core proteins are non-cross reactive immunologically.  The identification and availability of different avian hepadnavirus core proteins would be a valuable tool leading to new vaccine carriers useful against the human disease.   Only 3 avian core proteins have been identified, and Dr. Peterson is actively seeking to examine blood samples from a variety of birds, in order to find new members of this viral group.