HOMECOMING U

By Jo McCulty Mary Schiavo, aviation program director in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Aviation, teaches a mini-course on the Wright brothers' work on Oct. 13. The presentation was part of Homecoming University, a new program during this year's Homecoming festivities under which a number of special classes taught by Ohio State faculty who are leaders in their fields were offered to alumni and other campus visitors.

Drive encourages support for charities close to home

With less than one month officially remaining in the Community Charitable Drive campaign on the Columbus campus, organizers are encouraging faculty and staff to support the charities that serve local communities.

"I think one interesting early phenomenon for this drive is the choice to give traditional support balanced with a very noble desire to help our neighbors in New York who have experienced tragedy," said Kam Sigafoos, chair of the 2001 Community Charitable Drive and associate executive director of University Hospitals. "We hope that everyone will make that extra stretch and give to central Ohio charities, as well."

At the drive's midpoint on Oct. 17, $268,000 had been raised, roughly 35 percent of this year's $760,000 goal. At that time, 1,356 faculty, staff and retirees had pledged to donate. The drive has a goal of 5,000 participants.

The rush of donations to relief efforts after the events of Sept. 11 has had an impact on donations locally, charity leaders said.

"It is a bit of a concern," said Lee Antle, vice president of operations for Community Health Charities, one of nine federations of charities to which faculty and staff can donate.

Antle said he has given to the Red Cross himself, but hopes donors will continue to make their regular contributions to local needs. "As a local federation, we concentrate on donations remaining in communities. It is important to have resources at the ready for any kind of disaster," he said.

Hospice at Riverside and Grant is one of the hundreds of health and human services charities that Ohio State faculty and staff can choose to give to through the campaign.

Hospice presentations on grieving have been in great demand this past month, said Nancy Wilkes, community education and public relations manager for Hospice at Riverside and Grant.

"We've had people call in since Sept. 11, on how to deal with grief. Crisis intervention is something we offer normally, but lately, the overwhelming grief that people are experiencing is really increasing the need," she said.

Hospice's mission is "to bring comfort, dignity and support to the end-of-life experience," Wilkes said. Most patients are in home care, but Hospice also offers short-term assisted living at Kobacker House, located a block north of Riverside Hospital on Olentangy River Road.

Jeri Kozobarich, development officer 3 for Ohio State's College of Education, is one of nearly 300 volunteers serving the organization. "When my father died in 1987, we had help from Hospice. They came to our home and were an enormous help during a difficult time in our lives," she said.

She became a volunteer four years ago, spending Friday evenings at Kobacker House, and helping out in a number of ways -- talking with families, assisting with patient care, playing with children and assisting with paperwork. "It's a very warm, comfortable and homey place. It's not like a hospital," Kozobarich said. "It makes everything easier for the families."

Kozobarich also makes a monetary donation each year, through the Community Charitable Drive. "I split my donation: one-third to Project Open Hand, one-third to Hospice and one-third to the Clintonville-Beechwold Community Resource Center," she said.

Private donations are pivotal to Hospice's service, Wilkes said. "We are supported in large part by the community. We couldn't do it without Medicaid and insurance, but those per diems don't cover it all," she said.

The American Diabetes Association is another charity to which Ohio State employees can direct their donations.

Greg Winslow, executive director of the American Diabetes Association, Central Ohio Area, said Ohio State donors have historically been very supportive of his organization. He hopes that tradition will continue this year.

"People with diabetes still had to wake up on Sept. 12 and stick their finger. Nothing has changed for us. We still have to fulfill our mission," he said.

Donations to the association are dipping, but it's not because individuals have stopped their support, he said. "We're finding that corporate contributions are down. When we're going to renew budgets, we've found there's less support there because they've already given away their funds for the year."

The American Diabetes Association has a mission to prevent and cure diabetes and improve the lives of all people affected by diabetes. "We focus on three areas: research, information and advocacy," Winslow said.

The association directly supports work done at the University. "We are providing $330,000 of research funding at Ohio State. This year, we are in the first year of a three-year allocation of $300,000, and we have given a one-time allocation of $30,000," Winslow said.

The Bucks for Charity drive will continue through Nov. 16. A new recognition program this year is Leaders Circle, with membership determined on a graduated scale. Depending upon their salary level, faculty and staff who donate between half of 1 percent to 2 percent of their annual salaries will be invited to the Leaders Circle Celebration, a community celebration with entertainment provided by Bill Cosby and Lionel Richie at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 5 in Nationwide Arena, and will be included in a drawing for donated prizes.

Also new this year is the addition of a ninth federation, Earth Share of Ohio, a consortium of environmental and conservation charities. The eight other federations represented are: the Black United Fund of Ohio; Community Health Charities of Ohio; Greater Columbus Community Shares; The United Negro College Fund; and United Way of Central Ohio and Delaware, Fairfield and Union counties. Each group serves as an umbrella organization for several independent member agencies representing a wide range of health and human services.

Pledge cards and donor guides are available from coordinators in all units on campus. For more information, call 292-0641.

DNA-based vaccine protects mice against anthrax

Researchers at Ohio State have shown that mice injected with fragments of DNA from anthrax bacteria can be immunized against the disease. In traditional vaccine approaches, researchers have used live, weakened or dead pathogens -- or proteins produced by the organisms -- to produce an immune response.

This new approach represents a new -- and perhaps, safer -- way to produce vaccines against highly contagious diseases.

This latest study, published in a recent issue of the journal Infection and Immunity, improves on earlier work that suggested that DNA-based vaccines might be effective. By using combinations of two gene products produced by the bacteria responsible for causing anthrax -- Bacillus anthracis -- the researchers were able to successfully immunize mice against the disease.

The work was headed by Darrell Galloway, associate professor of microbiology at Ohio State, and colleagues at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research and the Biological Defense Research Directorate program at the Naval Medical Research Center in Silver Spring, Md.

Anthrax is a lethal disease if not detected shortly after exposure to bacterial spores. Antibiotics are effective in halting it if given soon after exposure before any symptoms develop. It is one of the leading potential agents discussed for use in biological terrorist attacks.

Once anthrax spores are inhaled, they are pulled deep into the lungs, where they usually are consumed by macrophages -- white cells that scavenge the body for pathogens and other components that may lead to disease.

"Unfortunately," Galloway said, "the macrophages seem to be uniquely sensitive to this bacteria and are essentially targeted." Once inside the macrophages, the spores germinate, producing bacterial cells that multiply until their numbers literally burst the cells, spreading infection. The bacterial cells produce and release toxin components that specifically attack additional macrophages, ultimately leading to death. This, in turn, releases massive amounts of cytokines -- critical chemical components of the immune response that cause physiologic effects throughout the system.

"Ultimately, the destruction of the macrophages, and the dumping into the bloodstream of the large amounts of cytokines produced by these cells, causes the patient to go into shock, which ultimately kills him," Galloway said.

His team focused on using the genes responsible for producing the bacterial toxin. These genes normally secrete three gene products -- protective antigen (PA), lethal factor (LF) and edema factor (EF). The protective antigen combines with the lethal factor to form a molecule known as lethal toxin, which can invade the cell and claim credit for the fatal potential of anthrax.

"Without PA," Galloway said, "neither of the remaining two toxin components would be effective."

To construct their vaccine, the researchers assembled groups of mice and injected them three times at two-week intervals with plasmids -- circular DNA molecules that are widely used for the cloning and expression of genes and their products -- containing fragments of PA and LF.

Some mice received PA plasmids only, some LF plasmids only and some received a combination of both. A control group received plasmids lacking PA or LF genes. Two weeks after the last injection, researchers measured the groups' antibody response to both gene products. Mice receiving gene-laden plasmids developed strong immune responses to the gene product they were exposed to.

"Significantly," the researchers wrote, "titers (measures) of antibody to the LF antigen appeared to be about twice those of antibody to the PA. This suggests that the LF antigen induces a greater response."

The researchers also found that mice that had received both PA and LF had nearly twice the immune response of mice receiving either agent alone. This is extremely important for researchers striving to produce the most effective vaccine.

The groups of mice were then injected with five times the lethal dose of the anthrax bacterial toxin. All mice that had received the plasmid injections were immune while all animals in the control group died within several hours.

Galloway said that the results are important enough to suggest that an effective vaccine might be possible that focuses on using additional Bacillus anthracis antigens, including a mutated form of the lethal factor antigen. Earlier vaccine studies were focused on using the PA antigen alone.

"The LF antigen appears to be much more immunogenic and produces an immune response lasting much longer than the response to the PA antigen," he said.

The researchers believe their current work is a strong argument for the feasibility of using a "DNA-based immunization strategy against anthrax" and that any future vaccines should incorporate a mutated version of the LF antigen.

In a recent, as-yet unpublished study, the Ohio State research team, in collaboration with scientists from Battelle, has demonstrated that the vaccine can protect against a significant aerosol challenge more than a year following the last inoculation.

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