Daily Pioneer News

PLATTEVILLE - At the beginning of this year's flu season, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced their approval of the 2006-2007 influenza vaccine. But in spite of the availability of the vaccine, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, also known as the CDC, estimates that more than 200,000 people are hospitalized yearly in the United States due to influenza, and around 36,000 die. Other alternatives or supplements to the vaccine are being studied to prevent the virus from having such devastating effects.

University of Wisconsin-Platteville alumna, Stacey Schultz-Cherry, is investigating one such possible treatment, and recently her research has resulted in a breakthrough.

When Schultz-Cherry studied at UW-Platteville, cell biology and microbiology were the two areas that interested her most. Unfortunately for her at the time, the biology department had not yet developed majors other than zoology and botany. So Schultz-Cherry decided to become a directed study major, taking courses that included cell biology, genetics and immunology. She was probably one of the first unofficial cell and molecular biology majors at UWP.

Post-graduation, she worked as a technician for several years before earning her doctoral degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the department of molecular and cellular pathology. Her three years there were spent studying the regulation of a particular growth factor that appears during development, wound healing and the immune response. The research would later prove instrumental when she went on to work with influenza. After completing her Ph.D., Schultz-Cherry returned to UW-Madison to start a postdoctoral fellowship.

She went on to work with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) as a lead scientist, accepting a position at the Southeast Poultry Research laboratory in Athens, Georgia. Within a month of her arrival, the sudden global spread of the pathogenic avian influenza, otherwise known as the "bird flu," became a pandemic threat. Due to their expertise and access to high containment facilities, scientists at the USDA worked closely with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to study the viruses, and Schultz-Cherry gained valuable experience in dealing with the emerging pathogen.

Currently, Schultz-Cherry is the assistant professor of medical microbiology and immunology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her present research is focused on the devastating H5N1 avian influenza viruses.

"We are particularly interested in why these avian viruses can transmit to people and cause lethal infection," explained Schultz-Cherry. "Although the majority of the work is very basic cellular and immunological research, we can also use this information for applied studies like vaccine and antiviral development and designing improved diagnostic tests."

Like the USDA, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has the high containment facilities required to work with avian influenza. Recently, Schultz-Cherry reported an exciting new breakthrough in the lab's research, which surrounds the identification of a new antiviral peptide that blocks influenza infection in cells and animals. Schultz-Cherry and her colleague, Dr. Curtis R. Brandt, recently published the discovery in the Journal of Virology.

"The peptide work, although very preliminary, is exciting because it may give us (in the future) a new strategy to inhibit influenza," explained Shultz-Cherry. "By understanding how our new peptide works, we may be able to use this information to design a new class of influenza antivirals." Many of the avian influenza viruses show resistance or decreased susceptibility to the current antivirals used, so the new peptide may be a welcome new addition to existing treatments.

Besides the influenza research, Schultz-Cherry is also currently studying a potential viral toxin in astrovirus, a pathogen that causes diarrhea in young children.

Contact: Stacey Schultz-Cherry, UWP alumna,slschul2@wisc.edu Prepared by: Kym Bliven, UWP Public Relations, (608) 342-1194, blivenk@uwplatt.edu