Story available at http://billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/10/04/news/local/18-fungus.txt

Published on Thursday, October 04, 2007.
Last modified on 10/4/2007 at 12:40 am

Itching to fight deadly fungus

By MARY PICKETT
Of The Gazette staff

Two Montana State University Billings biologists are making history while tackling a nasty fungus that can kill people.

Their research into the Candida albicans fungus has led to the university's application for its first patent to protect intellectual-property rights.

David Butler, 46, an associate professor of biology, was working on the C. albicans fungus before Kurt Toenjes, 42, came to MSU Billings two years ago.

Toenjes, 42, had been studying the same fungus at the University of Vermont, where he primarily was a researcher.

The fact that Butler also was researching the fungus was one reason Toenjes took the job in Billings.

Everybody has the C. albicans fungus in their gastrointestinal tracts. In healthy people, the fungus usually is no problem, but it can cause thrush - a yeast infection of the mouth, tongue and esophagus - in babies, the elderly and AIDS patients, among others.

It also causes yeast infections in women and toenail infections.

While those conditions can be uncomfortable and painful, they usually aren't life-threatening.

But if a person's immune system is compromised by chemotherapy, radiation therapy, steroids or AIDS, the fungus can cause a systemic infection that attacks major organs.

Being in a hospital intensive care unit is another risk factor.

Toenjes' wife's elderly grandfather died from the infection after contracting it through a catheter.

When C. albicans spreads through the body, mortality can be has high as 30 to 40 percent. Be-tween 5,000 and 7,000 people die from it every year in the United States.

Some drugs will kill the fungus, but they have side effects.

Research that Toenjes and Butler did at MSU Billings focused on interfering with a process that is thought to enable C. albicans to spread into the body.

The fungus grows two ways. One is by a bulge forming on the side the cell. The bulge eventually breaks off and forms a new cell.

In the second way, an elongated filament forms to the side of the cell, and new cells break off from the filament.

There's a theory that C. albicans invades the body when it goes back and forth between those two types of growth.

Research by Toenjes and Butler focuses on blocking the fungus from that transition.

They discovered a molecule - BH3I-1 - that inhibits the transition in the lab, although it's not known if it will do that in mice or humans.

MSU Billings' patent is for a method to use BH3I-1 as a broad anti-fungal drug or as a lab reagent to study the fungus. It also might be used as an anti-cancer drug.

Now that a patent has been filed, that molecule is available for other researchers to come up with applications for it.

Because of many hurdles, including the difficulty of getting approval from the Food and Drug Administration, chances are slim - on par with winning the lottery - that the molecule would become part of a drug to treat people anytime soon.

But it could be tested in mice to see if it would protect the animals from C. albicans and other fungi.

The research was supported by the Montana IDeA Network for Biomedical Research Excellence from the National Institutes of Health. The grant bought equipment, hired technicians and provided money to hire Toenjes as a half-time researcher and half-time teacher.

MSU Billings undergrads, who were hired as technicians, contributed to the basic science of the research.

The grant and the research it funds are "pretty novel for MSU Billings," Toenjes said.

"It'd be nice if it could happen again," he said.

The project also is supported by the Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence, another NIH program.

Billings attorney Toni Tease handled the legal work required to file the patent. Tease is one of only a few patent attorneys in the state.

This is Toenjes' third patent. He found this one was much easier to complete because of the support that he received from MSU Billings Chancellor Ron Sexton, Provost George White and Tease's law firm.

Because of the backlog of work at the federal patent office, it will be at least four years before they know if MSU Billings' application has been approved.

Even though action on the patent is years away, now that the patent application has been filed, anyone can buy licensing rights from the university to start research.

Any revenue resulting from the patent would be split among MSU Billings, Toenjes and Butler after the university recoups its expenses.

Toenjes and Butler's next project is to collaborate with Andrea and Don Stierle, two Montana Tech researchers who are studying microbes from the Berkeley Pit that not only have survived the pit's toxic soup but also have other interesting characteristics.

When people talk about scientific research in Montana, they think of MSU in Bozeman, UM in Missoula and maybe Montana Tech, Toenjes said.

Proposals to start research on other campuses usually raise concerns that money will be spread too thin.

Toenjes answers that criticism by saying good work is being done in Billings and that MSU Billings can train undergrads in different ways than larger campuses.

Billings has smaller classes and professors dedicated to teaching, he said, and that attracts dedicated students, some of whom are passionate about research.

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