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The Paul Taylor Dance Company will close out the season on May 3. Photo courtesy of Staller Center

By Rita J. Egan

Stony Brook University’s Staller Center for the Arts has planned an upcoming spring season filled with diverse entertainment options, from music to dance to comedy and nights out on the town to family-fun experiences.

Season openers

STAR POWER: Two-time Tony® Award-winner Sutton Foster returns to the Staller Center on February 1. Photo courtesy of Staller Center

Alan Inkles, Staller Center director, said the season kicks off on the Main Stage with family fun on Sunday, Jan. 26. The circus act The Great DuBois, featuring Michael DuBois and Viktoria Grimmy, will feature juggling, aerial stunts, comedy and more,

“It’s that time of year where it’s three weeks after the holidays are over, you’re looking for something to do, and I thought a nice family show would be a good time for that,” he said.

Later that week, on Saturday, Feb. 1, the venue will host its annual gala. This year will be An Evening with Sutton Foster, featuring the two-time Tony Award winner in her solo concert. Foster has released three studio albums that mix Broadway and jazz classics along with her own compositions.

Regarding Foster, who has starred in several Broadway productions, including Thoroughly Modern Millie, Anything Goes and The Music Man, Inkles said, “No one is working harder or doing more shows.”

For the first time this year, gala attendees can purchase tickets for the show, a pre-concert dinner and a post-show dessert reception. As in previous years, they can also buy tickets for the show only or the show and reception. 

According to Inkles, the money raised from gala ticket sales helps to produce other Staller Center shows and to fund its educational outreach programs. This outreach includes making tickets available to underrepresented families and university students and bringing petting zoos to various schools, churches and libraries.

Let the music play

Among this season’s musical acts will be Grammy-winning violinist Joshua Bell and soprano Larisa Martinez on Feb. 15 with Voice and the Violin. The husband-and-wife act will play classical art songs and operas to show tunes and selections from Latinx composers. Mardi Gras will be celebrated on Feb. 21 in the Staller Center’s Recital Hall with New Orleans Songbook, presented by Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Melissa Errico, accompanied by prolific jazz pianist Billy Stritch, will return to the Staller Center on March 22 for a tribute concert honoring the late Stephen Sondheim. Inkles described Errico as the “quintessential singer of Steven Sondheim.”

The Tony nominee will interpret the songwriter’s works, including Send in the Clowns and Good Thing Going and offer insights into the stories behind the pieces.

“Every Broadway singer in the world knows if you want Sondheim, Melissa Eririco is your gal,” Inkles said.

Returning on April 2 is Starry Nights. Directed by Colin Carr, Stony Brook University Department of Music musicians will perform chamber selections, including the works of Schubert, Schoenberg and Schulhoff.

On April 14, the Emerson Legacy Series will perform with former Emerson String Quartet member Paul Watkins. While known for being a cellist, Watkins will be playing piano in the April show, accompanying soprano Christine Goerke. The night will feature classical and cabaret styles and also include Eugene Drucker on violin and Larry Dutton on viola.

Make them laugh

The Staller Center will present two comedy productions this season. The Comedy of Errors by The Acting Comedy, in conjunction with the nonprofit Play on Shakespeare, takes place on Feb. 8. The comedy incorporates mistaken identities with whimsical adventures.

Brooklyn native Chris Distefano will perform his comedy show on March 8. Inkles described the comedian, known for his work on MTV’s Guy Code and Girl Code, as charming and having a growing fan base and said the act is a relatively clean show.

More fun for the family

The month of March will end with the classic Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf on March 30. The Staller Center Outreach Ensemble, which includes SBU music department students, allows audience members to learn how each instrument represents a character in the tale. The student-actors will also mingle with ticket holders after the show, where attendees can try the instruments. Inkles said the play is a way to introduce young people to the arts. In addition to the performance on March 30, the following day, children from a few of Suffolk County’s school districts will attend free of charge. During the year, the outreach ensemble also performs at schools, senior centers and hospitals.

Circus company The 7 Fingers will present Duel Reality on April 11 and 12. The company blends circus, theater and dance. Inkles said the storyline is loosely based on Romeo and Juliet with two feuding families and includes stunts and illusions.

In addition to the circus element, Inkles said, “I think the adults will enjoy the story that’s going on behind it.”

Dancing feet 

The Syncopated Ladies, known for fusing storytelling with tap dancing and winning the first dance crew battle of So You Think You Can Dance, will perform at the Staller Center on March 14. The all-female tap group is choreographed by Emmy Award-nominated choreographer Chloé Arnold, who collaborated with Beyoncé in the past.

“This is going to be a phenomenal night,” Inkles said. “It’s really great for young people, and people who love tap.”  

A week later, on March 21, audiences can enjoy Rhythm India: Bollywood & Beyond, which features traditional Indian dances from classical to Bollywood hits. Inkles said the production includes approximately 30 to 40 dancers.

Inkles said the Staller Center has partnered with Indu Kaur, owner of Curry Club at SaGhar in Port Jefferson, to bundle a ticket to the show and dinner at the restaurant for $95.

“I want to get the Indian community to our show, and I want the American community, too, because I want them to see the culture,” Inkles said. “I really want this amazing Indian community to make sure they come to this and get to see the culture and share with our audience.”

The last dance performance and show of the Staller Center’s spring season will be on May 3 with the Paul Taylor Dance Company. The modern dance group will perform classics and new works.

And, more

Inkles said in addition to the Staller Center’s spring season, the venue hosts the Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra; and offers the Met Opera: Live in HD series on the Main Stage screen and art exhibitions in the Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery.

Stony Brook University’s Staller Center for the Arts is located at 100 Nicolls Road, Stony Brook. To order tickets, call the box office at 631-632-2787 or visit stallercenter.com.

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#2 Zaida Gonzalez looks to pass the ball during Saturday's game. Photo courtesy of Stony Brook Athletics

Stony Brook women’s basketball fell to Elon, 60-48, on Friday evening on the road. Zaida Gonzalez tallied a team-high 15 points, but the Seawolves offense was outscored 21-10 over the final quarter of action and suffered a loss at the hands of the Phoenix.

Stony Brook started off strong, putting together an 8-6 lead through the first quarter as Breauna Ware and Lauren Filien each scored three points to give the Seawolves their initial lead.

Stony Brook built that lead to 15-12 before going on an 8-0 run starting at the 5:35 mark in the second period to increase its advantage to 23-12. The Phoenix cut into that lead, but the Seawolves still enjoyed a 23-13 score heading into halftime. Stony Brook dominated in the paint, scoring 10 of its 15 points close to the basket. Filien and Devyn Scott each recorded four points to close out the first half.

Stony Brook then lost its advantage in the third quarter, trailing the Phoenix 39-38 at the last second. The Phoenix processed to go on an 8-0 run and the Seawolves were unable to pull any closer losing by a final of 60-48. Elon’s Iycez Adams scored all 17 of her points through the second half as Stony Brook’s defense was outlasted.

STATS AND NOTES

  • Zaida Gonzalez led the Seawolves with 15 points, adding two rebounds, two steals, and an assist to her final stat line.
  • Stony Brook got a game-high 12 rebounds from Shamarla King, as she tallied eight points and one block.
  • Lauren Filien scored a career-high nine points in the loss.
  • Stony Brook played solid perimeter defense, holding Elon to 15 percent from beyond the arc on 13 attempts.
  • The Stony Brook defense forced 14 turnovers.
  • Elon out-rebounded Stony Brook 38-33 and the Phoenix finished with a narrow 11-8 advantage on the offensive glass.
  • Stony Brook was outscored 21-10 in the fourth quarter. The Seawolves shot 36 percent (4-11) from the floor, finishing the contest with seven turnovers through the final ten minutes.

Up next, the team continues their road trip as they take on North Carolina A&T on Sunday, Jan. 19 at 2 p.m. This will be only the fifth meeting between the Seawolves and Aggies in program history. Coverage is set to be available on FloCollege.

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Photo courtesy of Stony Brook Athletics

Stony Brook men’s basketball dropped a road contest to Delaware, 84-74, on Thursday evening at the Bob Carpenter Center in Newark, Delaware. .Joe Octave and CJ Luster II combined to score 43 points, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the Blue Hens’ offense.

Stony Brook played well early on, jumping out to a lead and holding an advantage in the scoring column over the opening five minutes of action.

After Delaware used back-to-back three-point makes to go ahead, the Seawolves answered with back-to-back triples of their own courtesy of Leon Nahar and Luster. A Nick Woodard basket bookended an 8-0 run by Stony Brook that put the Seawolves ahead, 19-14, at the 11:22 mark.

Stony Brook went nearly three minutes without a basket, allowing the Blue Hens to regain the lead. Jared Frey connected from deep to push the Seawolves back ahead, 22-21.

The contest continued to go back and forth, seeing the lead change hands once more in favor of Delaware. Stony Brook flipped things with a 9-2 run over a two-minute span to turn a two-point deficit into a four-point lead.

The Blue Hens closed out the final four minutes of the first half with a 10-6 scoring run to take a 39-37 lead into the locker room.

Octave opened the second half scoring with a basket inside to even the score before Delaware took control of the contest.

The Blue Hens built a double-digit lead less than nine minutes into the second half, maintaining a comfortable lead for the remainder of regulation.

A six-point spurt brought Stony Brook within seven points of Delaware with nine minutes to play, but it was as close as they would come for the rest of the evening.

Delaware led by as many as 17 at one point; Stony Brook battled back but time ran out on the Seawolves’ late push.

“Offensively, we did some good stuff. Delaware has a nice team and both their high-major transfers played like it. We had zero answer for Lane or Camden,” head coach Geno Ford said. “I am really disappointed in our rebounding, because that’s not a strength of their team and we have been one of the better offensive rebounding teams in our conference so far. Tonight, that didn’t show up. We have no consistency as a group right now.

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This graphic illustrates the mechanisms that occur in kidney disease that leads to a poor protective antibody response against influenza infection and following vaccination. Image prepared using Biorender.com

Fighting off infections when one has chronic disease is a common problem, and during the Covid-19 pandemic that scenario often turned out to be dangerous and deadly. A new study led by Stony Brook Medicine demonstrates that advanced kidney disease compromises the survival of B cells, a type of infection-fighting white blood cell that produces antibodies to kill microbes, and thus significantly reduces the immune response to the influenza virus. The findings are published in Nature Communications.

Comorbid health conditions are critical determinants of immune function. One comorbid condition associated with increased risk of severe infection and infection-related deaths is kidney disease. Infections are the second major cause of death in patients with kidney disease. According to the International Society of Nephrology, an estimated 20 percent of patients with kidney disease die from infection. During the Covid-19 pandemic, mortality rates were as much as 10 times higher for those who had kidney disease compared to those with normal kidney function.

Lead author Partha Biswas, DVM, PhD, a Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, and colleagues, set out to better understand why those who have kidney disease are unable to mount a protective immune response. The study centered on the condition experienced during kidney disease called uremia – the accumulation of toxic metabolites in the body in the absence of kidney filtration of the blood.

To date clinical studies often show a poor B cell-mediated antibody response after an infection or vaccination in those with kidney disease. Additionally, kidney disease is a known predisposing factor for infection complications, however the reasons are not clear.

“Most studies linking kidney disease with abnormal B cell response were either performed in kidney transplant patients or are corelative in nature. Since kidney transplant patients are immune compromised, it is difficult to assess the impact of kidney disease on B cell response per se,” explains Dr. Biswas.

The researchers used a multiple well-characterized murine model of kidney disease that progresses to renal dysfunction in the subjects. Healthy mice and those with kidney disease were immunized with model immunogens or infected with the influenza virus to trigger a germinal center (GC) response in the spleen, which is central to the development of protective antibody level and infection-fighting response.                                               

They discovered several cellular changes that helps to illustrate the poor immune response in the kidney disease model:

  • Kidney dysfunction leading to accumulation of toxic metabolites triggered cell death in GC B cells leading to poor antibody response during immunization.
  • A previously unidentified role of uremic toxic metabolites hippuric acid (HA) is responsible for increased cell death of GC B cells.
  • HA drove increased death of GC B cells via activating a specific G protein coupled receptor for niacin, which appears to further affect normal B cell response.
  • Kidney disease had negative impact on and inhibits GC and antibody response following influenza virus infection.

According to Dr. Biswas, the paper provides mechanistic insights on how kidney disease negatively impacts protective B cell response infection and immunization. He and his co-investigators believe that the knowledge gained from the laboratory study may shed light on how to generate protective antibody response following vaccination in individuals with kidney disease.

Currently, Dr. Biswas and colleagues are tooling up to use this experimental system to address the apparent lack of response to SARS-CoV 2 vaccination in kidney disease individuals, which may have broader implications for other respiratory virus and bacterial infections seen in these patients.

The research was supported in part by numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including several to Dr. Biswas, grants AI142354, AI162616, AI159058, and AI181831.

Collaborators included scientists from numerous departments and facilities at the University of Pittsburgh, and the Medical College of Georgia.

 

 

 

Credit: Image prepared using Biorender.com

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Photo courtesy of Stony Brook Athletics

Stony Brook women’s basketball came back from an 11-point deficit with Zaida Gonzalez knocking down a game-tying shot with one second left on the clock to send the game to overtime and Shamarla King put the team ahead for good to give the Seawolves an 87-83 win over Charleston at home on Jan. 12.

The Seawolves (8-7, 3-1) had four players score in double figures, led by Gonzalez, who put together a Division I program recording breaking performance with 37 points, tallying her first career double-double with 10 rebounds. Janay Brantley tacked on 12 points and seven rebounds as King helped out with a double-double of her own, 11 points and 10 rebounds. Breauna Ware also recorded 11 points to help Stony Brook to the overtime victory.

The Seawolves had an effective defensive performance, grabbing 32 rebounds to Charleston’s 24 and forcing 13 Charleston turnovers. Gonzalez led with nine rebounds on the defensive end, while King collected seven.

On the offensive end, Stony Brook shot 41.9 percent from the field and 29.4 from beyond the arc while crashing the offensive glass with 18 total boards compared to the Cougars’ 16. Brantley and King both grabbed a team-high three offensive rebounds each.

After playing to a 2-2 tie early in the game, Stony Brook went on a 7-0 run with 7:59 left in the first quarter, culminating in a three from Gonzalez, to take a 9-2 lead. Charleston then responded to tie things up at 18-18 heading into the second quarter. Stony Brook capitalized on six Charleston turnovers in the period, as Brantley led early with six points and five rebounds.

The two teams then played an even second quarter and entered halftime with the score knotted up at 32-32. Brantley and Ware each tallied four points to keep the Seawolves on pace with the Cougars.

After intermission, Charleston snatched a 38-35 lead before Stony Brook answered back by going on a 5-0 run, punctuated by a three from Ware, to grab a 40-38 lead with 5:56 to go in the third. Chloe Oliver notched five points to lead the Seawolves through the quarter as the Cougars responded to seize a 54-47 lead entering the fourth quarter.

Charleston kept widening its lead in the fourth, constructing a 72-64 advantage before Stony Brook went on a 7-0 run, finished off by another Gonzalez three, to shrink the deficit to 72-71 with 10 seconds to go in the fourth. Gonzalez was the rallying cry for Stony Brook, scoring 17 points in the fourth quarter as the Seawolves outscored the Cougars the rest of the way to tie it up at 73-73 to send the game to overtime.

 Stony Brook then took care of business, outscoring Charleston as Gonzalez tallying 10 of the 14 Seawolves points to seize victory by a final score of 87-83.

“An unbelievably hard-fought game by both teams,” noted head coach Joy McCorvey postgame. “Charleston is a very good team, and we knew we had to bring it on the defensive side and take pride in our 1 v 1 defense. Zaida Gonzalez was unbelievable and put on quite a display on the offensive end and knocked down her free throws down the stretch. She stepped up big when we lost Janay and Breauna to foul trouble as well as everyone that came in. Great and fun team win!”

Up next, the team travels to North Carolina to take on Elon on Jan. 17 at 7 p.m. with coverage available on FloCollege. This will be only the fourth meeting between the Seawolves and Phoenix in program history.

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Photo courtesy of Stony Brook Athletics

Stony Brook men’s basketball battled with Northeastern, ultimately falling 70-66, on Jan. 11 at Stony Brook Arena. The Seawolves erased a 14-point, first-half deficit, but faltered down the stretch and allowed the Huskies to escape with the four-point victory.

Northeastern started fast, scoring the first eight points of the evening and building an early 10-3 lead.

CJ Luster II started scorching hot to allow Stony Brook to hang around in the early going, connecting on a pair of threes to get the Seawolves on the board.

The Huskies built their lead back to seven points at the 12:10 mark, but the Seawolves fought back to make it a one-possession game on multiple occasions.

Northeastern used a 16-4 run to construct a 14-point lead, the largest gap between the two teams in the first half. The run spanned more than four minutes. The Huskies carried a 13-point advantage into the intermission.

Stony Brook narrowed the deficit to single digits on a Joe Octave jumper early in the second half, but Northeastern responded with a three on the ensuing possession to push the Seawolves’ deficit back to double figures.

Another Seawolves spurt offensively made it an eight-point game with more than 14 minutes remaining. Nick Woodard buried a triple to bookend a 7-0 Stony Brook run, bringing the Seawolves within five points of the Huskies.

Stony Brook tied the contest at 50 on a Woodard basket inside with 8:07 to play, evening the score for the first time since the opening tip.

The Seawolves grabbed their first lead of the evening, 52-50, on a basket inside by Woodard out of the under-eight timeout.

Stony Brook’s lead grew to five points on a steal-and-score by Collin O’Connor, leading to a Northeastern timeout. Defensively, the Seawolves forced five Huskies’ turnovers and held Northeastern without a point for more than four minutes to turn a five-point deficit into a five-point advantage with 5:31 to play.JB Frankel ended Northeastern’s scoring drought with a trifecta on a second-chance effort, but O’Connor answered on the other end to make it a two-possession contest once more.

Back-to-back Northeastern baskets followed, tying the game at 57-57 and forcing Stony Brook to use its first timeout of the second half. The Huskies regained the lead, 59-57, with two minutes remaining after Masai Troutman was fouled on a three-point attempt and made two of three.

Northeastern scored 11 straight points, holding Stony Brook scoreless for more than four minutes to erase the deficit and take a 64-57 lead with less than a minute to play.

Leon Nahar and Woodard connected on three-pointers, with Woodard’s pulling the Seawolves within three points of Northeastern with 16 seconds left. 

Andre Snoddy buried a triple after a pair of Huskies’ free throws, making it a one-possession game again, but Troutman made his 13th and 14th free throws of the contest to make it a four-point game with 2.6 seconds left.

Northeastern ultimately erased the late deficit and completed the comeback, taking down Stony Brook 70-66.

“We really competed hard tonight. The crowd was awesome. We were up five points with five minutes to go and just couldn’t make a big play down the stretch,” said head coach Geno Ford. “We took some steps forward in some areas and just have to keep working at it.”

Up next, the team hits the road to face Delaware on Thursday, Jan. 16. The Seawolves and Blue Hens tip-off at 6:30 p.m. from the Bob Carpenter Center, with the contest streaming on FloCollege.

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Pixabay photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Small particles from the raging wildfires in Los Angeles that have killed residents, destroyed homes and businesses and have caused massive evacuations have crossed the country, reaching Long Island.

Arthur Sedlacek, III Aerosol Processes Group leader at Brookhaven National Laboratory

“Our instruments are picking up evidence detecting California wildfires already,” said Arthur Sedlacek, III, Aerosol Processes Group leader in the Environmental & Climate Sciences Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory. “What’s happening 3,000 miles away can impact us” just like the fires in Quebec did.

The amount and concentration of particles on Long Island from these particles doesn’t present a health risk to many people in the population.

“For those who are sensitive to inhalation irritation, it opens up the possibility” of developing breathing difficulties or adding particles that could irritate their lungs, Sedlacek continued.

To be sure, the majority of people on Long Island and the east coast may not react to levels of particulates that are considerably lower than for residents of Los Angeles and the surrounding areas.

Local doctors suggested that these particles can trigger a range of health problems for those who are closer to the flames and smoke.

“The general rule is the larger the exposure, the greater the effect,” said Dr. Norman Edelman, a  pulmonologist at Stony Brook Medicine. 

Researchers have shown that the exposure doesn’t have to be especially high to affect health.

‘We more we look, the more we see that lower and lower doses will have negative effects,” said Edelman.

If and when particulates build in the air where patients with lung challenges live, pulmonologists urge residents to take several steps to protect themselves.

First, they can adjust their medication to respond to a greater health threat.

In addition, they can wear a particle mask, which is not an ordinary surgical mask.

Over time, continued exposure to particulates through pollution, wildfires or other emissions may have a cumulative health effect.

Dr. Norman Edelman. Photo courtesy of SBU

In the South Bronx, about 40 percent of children have asthma, compared with closer to 10 percent for the rest of the country. While genetics may contribute to that level, “we believe it’s because they are exposed to intense, continuous air pollution from motor vehicle traffic,” said Edelman, as cars and trucks on the Cross Bronx Expressway pollute the air in nearby neighborhoods.

The cumulative effect on people with existing disease is more pronounced.

Even when exposure and a lung reaction end, people “don’t quite come back to where [they] started,” said Edelman. “They lose a little bit of lung function.”

Particulates not only can cause damage for people who have chronic lung issues, like asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, but can also cause problems for people who have other medical challenges.

“We do know that this kind of pollution generates heart attacks in people with heart disease,” said Edelman. “That’s relatively new knowledge.”

A heating cycle

The ongoing fires, which started on Jan. 7 and were exacerbated by the Santa Ana winds of 70 miles per hour, have been consuming everything in their path, throwing a range of particles into the air.

These can include organic particles, black particles, which is akin to something that comes out of the tailpipe of a school bus and all sorts of particles in between, Sedlacek said.

These particles can form condensation nuclei for clouds and water droplets and they can absorb solar radiation and light.

Heating the upper troposphere with particles that absorb radiation alters the typical convention dynamic, in which hot air usually rises and cool air sinks

These changes in convection, which can occur with each of these major wildfires, can affect local air currents and even, in the longer term, broader air circulation patterns.

Sedlacek suggested that some areas in California and in the west may have reduced the use of controlled burns, in part because of the potential for those fires to blaze out of control.

“With the absence of range management and controlled burns to clear out the understory, you don’t have those natural fire breaks that would otherwise exist,” said Sedlacek. “In my opinion, you have to do controlled burns.”

Wildfires, Sedlacek added, are a “natural part of the ecosystem,” returning nutrients that might otherwise be inaccessible to the soil.

Without wildfires or controlled burns, areas can have a build up of understory that grows over the course of decades and that are potentially more dangerous amid a warming planet caused by climate change.

Indeed, recent reports from the Copernicus Climate Change Service indicate that 2024 was the hottest year on record, with temperatures reaching 1.6 degrees Celsius above the average in pre-industrial revolution levels. The Paris Climate Accord aimed to keep the increase from the late 19th century to well below 2 degrees, with an emphasis on a 1.5 degree limit.

The fires themselves have become a part of the climate change cycle, contributing particulates and greenhouse gases to processes that have made each of these events that much worse.

“These fires generate greenhouse gases and aerosol particles in the atmosphere that can then further increase or contribute to a warming of the globe,” said Sedlacek. “We have this positive feedback loop.”

In the climate change community, researchers discuss feedback, which can be positive, pushing an event or trend further in the same direction, or negative, which alters a process.

Sedlacek likens this to driving in a car that’s heading to the right towards the shoulder. In negative feedback, a driver steers the car in the other direction while positive feedback pushes the car further from the road.

Wildfires, which contribute and exacerbate global warming, can push the car towards a ditch, Sedlacek said.

Some scientists have urged efforts to engage in geoengineering, in which researchers propose blocking the sun, which would cause negative feedback.

“That might be a great idea on paper, but I don’t know if you want to play chemistry on a global scale,” said Sedlacek. Considering efforts to reduce solar radiation has merit, he suggested, but requires a closer analysis under controlled circumstances to understand it.

“I sincerely hope that the powers that be will appreciate the importance of what we do to understand” these processes, Sedlacek said. Understanding the models researchers have created can inform decisions.

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From left, Iwao Ojima, Ashna Garg and Maurizio Del Poeta. Photo by Kathryn Takemura

By Daniel Dunaief

It worked for mice and now, several years later, has shown promise for cats.

Researchers from Maurizio Del Poeta’s lab, working closely with those from Iwao Ojima’s team at Stony Brook University, have demonstrated that an experimental treatment against a fungus resistant to the current standard of care can work with cats battling a ferocious infection, albeit on a small sample size.

The Stony Brook team, along with scientists and veterinarians in Brazil, used a drug they created in 2018 called D13 to treat 10 cats with severe forms of a fungus that affects cats and humans called sporotrichosis.

With this treatment, which the researchers introduced as a powder into the cat’s food, half of the 10 felines whose skin was under insidious attack from the fungus staged remarkable recoveries, offering a potentially promising development that could one day also offer an alternative care for cats and for people.

“The prevalence in South America is 25 to 20 cases per 100,000 people, which is not low,” explained Del Poeta, Distinguished Professor of Microbiology and Immunology. “It affects mostly immunocompromised people and particularly people who have cats or people taking care of infected cats.”

Tis cat presented no improvement of the tumor-like lesion and of an ulcerated lesion on the nasal region upon treatment with ITC. After adding D13, the cat significantly improved, even though clinical cure was not achieved after 4 weeks of treatment with ITC and D13 combination.

Typically, people get superficial infections, but a person who is severely immunocompromised could have an infection that spreads and becomes fatal.

The work taps into the expertise of Ojima, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry. Ojima worked on the structure elucidation, the structure activity relationship and development of efficient synthetic methods for large scale synthesis of the drug.

Recent Stony Brook PhD graduate Ashna Garg contributed to this ongoing effort.

Ojima described the work as “solidly encouraging” and added that the scientists have “even better compounds in the same series for human use” that are more potent and more selective to fungi compared to humans which makes systemic toxicity “very low.”

Del Poeta’s lab has been studying sphingolipids metabolism and signaling in fungal and mammals cells to identify new markers for early diagnosis and microbial enzymes/ molecules essential to cause infections in the attempt to develop new antifungal targets.

To be sure, in the cat research, five out of the 10 cats didn’t complete the study. One of them died, although the cause of death was unknown, and four of the other cats abandoned the study.

Additionally, one of the cats for whom the drug worked showed an elevated level of a liver enzyme, which returned to normal within weeks of the conclusion of the study.

Still, the results were promising and provided encouraging improvements for cats battling an infection that threatened their health.

“I am very pleased with the efficacy of D13 on cats in Brazil,” explained Ojima, adding that it is “a compelling result.”

Additionally, in other preliminary studies, D13 works against various fungal infections, including cryptococcosis, aspergillosis and candidiasis. A new derivative of D13 is more effective for those other infections, the scientists said.

Del Poeta explained that the scientists chose to do the research in Brazil because of the prevalence of sporotrichosis in the area and because he had established collaborations in the country in earlier research.

‘Proud and grateful’

For her part, Garg was thrilled to contribute to research that provided a remedy to a deteriorating condition in an animal some of her friends own as pets.

Cat owners often reacted emotionally when she told them about her work, appreciating the significance of the results.

“I am deeply proud and grateful to have contributed to this work,” said Garg. “Its remarkable effectiveness continues to inspire and motivate me.”

A significant part of her PhD revolved around taking the initial lead compounds and developing second and third generation compounds to enhance their effectiveness and bioavailability.

With three bromine atoms, D13 is an unusual therapeutic treatment.

Bromine is “relatively rare among the top 200 pharmaceuticals,” Garg explained. “Bromine can be toxic or can act as an irritant. Part of my work involved exploring ways to reduce the bromine content” to make the treatment more viable in drug development. The scientists are working to understand why and how this treatment works.

“The exact mechanism of action of D13 is not fully understood yet but we are getting very close,” Garg explained.

With the third generation of D13, the team identified compounds that are highly fungal specific with broad spectrum activity, effectively eradicating 100 percent of the three malignant type of fungi.

“It’s important to note that some first and second generation compounds also demonstrated excellent antifungal activity at very low drug concentrations, even if they did not achieve complete eradication on one of the three fungal strains,” Garg added.

While promising, this study does not indicate a new human treatment will be on the market in the short term.

The scientists are doing toxicology studies and hope a new therapeutic option might be available as soon as five years, Del Poeta estimated.

From Delhi to Stony Brook

Garg, who defended her thesis in December, grew up in Delhi, India, where she pursued her undergraduate studies in Chemistry at Delhi University.

After that, she earned her Master’s in Chemistry at Vellore Institute of Technology in Tamil Nadu, India.

Garg arrived at Stony Brook in 2019 and joined Ojima’s lab in early 2020, just at the start of the pandemic.

“It was indeed a challenging time to start a new position,” Garg acknowledged.

Currently a resident of Poquott, Garg enjoys living on Long Island, where she visits beaches, drives around the area and cooks.

Garg, who attended meetings in the labs of both Professors Ojima and Del Poeta, is grateful for the support of these senior scientists, who were also part of her thesis committee.

Del Poeta described Garg as a “dedicated scientist” with an “impeccable” work ethic.

“Drug synthesis can be very challenging,” Del Poeta described. “She is tirelessly resilient.”

Garg is staying at Stony Brook for another year as a post-doctoral researcher.

Del Poeta is pleased with the productive collaboration he’s had with Ojima, whom he described as “passionate, intellectually stimulating, dedicating, inspiring and hard working.”

If Del Poeta sends an email on Saturday night, Ojima typically replies by Sunday morning.

“It is an honor to collaborate with him,” Del Poeta explained. Ojima’s work “makes these impressive results possible.”

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Individuals who have had multiple Covid-19 infections appear prone to contracting Long Covid, which may include symptoms such as fatigue, respiratory distress and mental fog.

Study published in The Lancet provides a basis for investigating Long Covid in the post-pandemic era

A new study that identified 475 patients with post-acute sequelae of Covid-19 (PASC), also known as Long Covid, revealed that nearly 85 percent (403) of these patients had multiple Covid-19 infections over the course of a four-year period (March 2020 to February 2024). Additionally, vaccination independently reduced the risk of Long Covid in patients who had received the vaccination prior to contracting the infection.

Conducted by a team of researchers at the Renaissance School of Medicine (RSOM) at Stony Brook University, in conjunction with the Stony Brook World Trade Center (WTC) Health and Wellness Program, the study may serve as a foundational assessment of Long Covid patients in the post-pandemic era. To date there are few studies with such a patient sample size that investigates what puts patients at risk for Long Covid and what causes this chronic condition.

The findings are published early online in the February edition of The Lancet Regional Health – Americas.

“While it is possible that the causes of Long Covid could be many and variable depending on the patient population studied, with this cohort the evidence is clear that by having Covid numerous times, patients became more at-risk for developing Long Covid,” says lead author Sean Clouston, PhD, Professor, Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine in the RSOM, and Program in Public Health.

He adds that after adjusting for relevant demographic, lifestyle, and clinical variables, the findings reveal a statistically significant association between experiencing multiple Covid-19 infections and the risk of experiencing PASC (aka Long Covid).

The patients were identified from a group of more than 2,500 first responders who previously had Covid and are prospectively monitored for infection complications by the Stony Brook WTC Health and Wellness Program. The 475 identified with Long Covid by the Program’s physicians, led by Benjamin Luft, MD, Director of the Program, continually experienced Long Covid symptoms ranging from fatigue, mental fog, other neurological conditions, as well as multiple respiratory problems and gastrointestinal symptoms.

Given that some of the first responder patients have had symptoms over the years related to their environmental exposures, such as respiratory illnesses, Long Covid symptoms were identified and charted separately and after each subsequent Covid infection.

Since there is no diagnostic test for Long Covid, the researchers followed the World Health Organization’s guidelines as to identifying Long Covid. They identified participants with Long Covid as having experienced the continuation or development of at least one new symptom that emerged within three months after their initial Covid-19 infection and persisted for at least two months without other concurrent medical explanation. In contrast, those without such experiences after having Covid were placed in the non-Long Covid group.

“There are some possible pathogenic mechanisms that cause Long Covid, but the entire spectrum of its risk factors remains unknown,” explains Dr. Luft, a co-author, the Edmund D. Pellegrino Professor of Medicine in the RSOM, and an infectious diseases specialist. “This is why our study and future ones are so important. Identifying specific risk factors such as re-infection or lack of vaccination can assist in better understanding and managing the condition.”

The authors point out that the safest way to avoid contracting Long covid is to prevent the infection in the first place. However, they emphasize that the role of vaccination in the risk of developing Long Covid cannot be underestimated. They wrote, “Among those who later developed PASC, we found that the risk of PASC was much higher among individuals who were unvaccinated at the time of their first (Covid-19) infection.”

Dr. Luft adds that the vaccine is imperfect, and of those who develop Covid – even though vaccinated – are at risk and should take measures to mitigate the severity of infection.

This research was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging (NIA) and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) – grants (NIH/NIA R01 AG049953), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – grants (CDC/NIOSH U01 OH011864) and (CDC/NIOSH U01 OH012275).

 

 

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Kevin Gardner Photo by Elise Sullivan

By Daniel Dunaief

Kevin Gardner has ambitious research goals. 

The Vice President for Research at Stony Brook University, who started working on Long Island on the same day as interim President Richard McCormick, is encouraging researchers to pursue interdisciplinary grants.

“We have a very robust office of proposal development,” said Gardner in an interview from Washington, DC when he was meeting on Capitol Hill with the New York delegation prior to the holidays. “Our strategy is to focus on growing larger grants.”

With a team prepared to help faculty across the university, Gardner hopes to drive innovation and discovery while building the university’s research budget.

The total funds from the top 1.6 percent of grants at the university account for 23 percent of the university’s research expenditures, which means that winning additional awards in this top tier could have a material effect on the funds that enable research.

The team that works with Gardner does considerable administrative work, reducing the burden for scientists focused on directing and overseeing research. Stony Brook also provides project management support.

Faculty members “can’t write these giant grants without that kind of support,” Gardner said. Stony Brook wants to get to that rarefied air where universities receive large, ambitious funds for comprehensive interdisciplinary work.

Going after these larger grants predates Gardner’s arrival.

“This is something that has been in the making for a couple of years,” said Gardner. He has seen an uptick in applications for these kinds of projects.

Stony Brook started research town halls this fall, with the first describing and encouraging collaborations between the east and west campuses.

Gardner has renamed his office the Office for Research and Innovation.

“This was done to more formally combine the offices of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development,” he explained. “Innovation speaks to new technologies, new approaches, and we have important roles in helping Long Island businesses innovate and continue to be successful. This is true for startups but equally true for manufacturing companies (through our Manufacturing Extension Program) and through our Small Business Development Center, among others!”

Enhancing an entrepreneurial culture

Hannah Estes

At the same time, the university is building and expanding efforts to encourage entrepreneurial initiatives among students and faculty.

Stony Brook recently hired Hannah Estes to become Director of Student Innovation.

Estes, who previously worked with Gardner at the University of Louisville, officially started at Stony Brook on January 6th.

She is focused on the entire school, as she hopes to help encourage students from a range of disciplines pursue various business ideas.

“Entrepreneurship can be found in any school or department,” said Estes, as she has seen new ideas originate in schools of social work, music and education.

She wants students to recognize problems and find ways to solve them. 

Estes plans to reach out to students through newsletters and social media and hopes to spend her first semester at Stony Brook listening to students and getting a sense of their interests and ideas.

In her work at the University of Louisville, she partnered with art school students who were able to get credit and helped coordinate financial aid to get them paid $20 per hour.

“It works and students are able to get away from their desks and get into the community,” Estes said.

As for local students on Long Island who are not members of the Seawolf community, Estes suggested the doors would be open to supporting with them as well.

Working with area high school students can create momentum that can develop into an interest in their business ideas and in joining Stony Brook.

As with the bigger university projects among faculty, the student efforts will also focus on interdisciplinary teams.

“The whole concept is to get out of your bubble and hear new perspectives,” said Estes. “It’s important for students to know that there are different ways of thinking.”

Gardner hopes the student-driven ideas can help engage a culture change among faculty as well.

“It is my sense that students are effective agents of change on a university campus,” Gardner explained. “And beyond that, these types of experiences are incredibly valuable for students during their education. “

In July, Stony Brook hired Dr. Michael Kinch as the inaugural Chief Innovation Officer, who is part of the university’s council and reports to Gardner.

At the same time, Andrew Wooten, the Executive Director of Long Island High Tech Incubator, has been taking inventions and ideas through a proof of concept to launch new companies. Wooten reports to the board of LIHTI.

Computing initiatives

In addition, Stony Brook has started an initiative to create an enclave for a computing environment that provides controlled unclassified information computing.

Such computing power, which is on the road towards classified work, is necessary to apply for funding from the Department of Defense and other agencies.

This effort requires a greater level of security and compliance.

As for high performance computing, the university does not have the level of capacity that the research community needs.

“High performance computing is a challenge at most campuses, particularly now keeping up with needs for AI-related computing,” Gardner explained. Stony Brook has a “very significant level of AI expertise,” which makes keeping up with their computational needs challenging.

Research and Development Park

Stony Brook is looking at how they can make the Research and Development Park an even greater asset to the university and the community.

“Everything we do serves our mission, so we need to make sure our neighbors in [Stony Brook] and our partners across the state share in a vision for how that R&D park can change and serve our mission and our community even better,” Gardner said.

He is energized by the opportunity to work at Stony Brook, where he feels that he has the ongoing support of colleagues who are working well together. As for his visit to Capitol Hill, Gardner travels to meet with the delegation and federal agencies around once a month.

“We want to make sure not just that they are advocates for us (which they most certainly are), but also to make sure we know what we can do for them,” he said. Stony Brook needs to “make sure that we are good partners for them.”

Echoing recent comments from Interim President Richard McCormick, Gardner recognizes the need to add more wastewater treatment to meet the university’s goals for expansion.

The university, which has seen state, national and international interest climb among students as Stony Brook rises in the rankings of universities and attracts major funding, is limited by several factors, including available wastewater facilities.

The university can’t bring in additional students because they don’t have the housing for them and “we can’t have the housing without the wastewater capacity,” Gardner said. “As an environmental engineer, I get it.”

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