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September 09-15, 2005 • Vol. 14 No. 34• www.madtimes.com • Free

African scientists at UW-Madison

On the cutting edge

by Jonathan Gramling

Page 1 of 4

The recent appointment of Daniel Okoli, a native of Nigeria, to the position of university architect this past spring underlines the many cutting edge contributions that Africans have made across the board to the University of Wisconsin-Madison's reputation as a world-class institution of higher learning. While these contributions have been most visible through the African Studies Program, these contributions also extend into the sciences and engineering.

Over the course of the next four weeks, The Madison Times will highlight the contributions and cutting-edge research that is being conducted by African scientists and graduate students on the Madison campus.

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Dr. Ogi Okwumabua, chief of Microbiology at the Wis. Veterinary Diagnostics Lab and professor of Clinical Diagnostics in the Dept. of Pathobiological Sciences at the School of Veterinary Medicine, is a superhero of sorts. Okwumabua looks very mild-mannered in his white lab coat as we talk in his cramped office on Madison's west side. But the research he performs may be vital to the future well-being and health of our society.

"My research focuses on the development of recombinant subunit vaccines for diseases caused by pathogenic bacteria," Okwumabua said. "I do what we call molecular subtyping. This technique allows you to differentiate the strain of bacteria involved in an outbreak." Okwumabua discovers antibodies that are effective against bacterial strains.

Okwumabua is receiving broad recognition for the work he is doing. During the past year, he has published two papers, one with the American Society for Microbiology and the other with the Federation of European Microbiological Societies.

While Okwumabua didn't develop an interest in his present field until his college years, he did become interested in education in his native Nigeria due, in large part, to his parent's dictates. "It was my upbringing and childhood at home that continues to drive me," Okwumabua said. "We always want to succeed. There's really no limit for us. You go as far as you can. Everyone in my family is well educated. I am the youngest son. Beginning with the oldest to the youngest, everyone has some kind of high educational position as a professor or head of a department or so. My family was like 'If you don't have a college degree, something is wrong.' My father was a teacher. If you didn't go to school, you had a problem."

With that drive, he obtained an undergraduate degree in Canada and earned a Master's degree at Georgia Tech before attaining his Ph.D. from Kansas State University's School of Veterinary Medicine. He has been conducting research for the past 20 years.

Okwumabua conducts research primarily on farm animals. "My interest is in devising a cure for any animal that is infected by any pathogenic bacteria," he said. "So any pathogen, as long as it is bacteria because my area is bacteriology, I think I feel very comfortable with it. It doesn't matter if it is swine or cattle."

Okwumabua is responsible for the course, direction, and survival of his research. He isn't handed anything on a silver platter by the university. "One thing that we look for always is sources of funding," Okwumabua said. "You need money to do your research. That money could come from government agencies such as the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. Or you can go through industry as well so they will fund your project. But when you are going through industry, you have to look at the legalities because the companies are there to make money. So you have to consult with the university and the university will guide you to make sure you don't make any mistakes. Working in the university is really flexible. No university will give you money and say every year 'Here is the money for you to do your research.' For you to do your research, it is very expensive to buy the reagents. If you are putting the vaccine in animals, you have to buy the animals. Those animals have to be maintained. You have to pay your technicians. It's your responsibility to continue to look for the funding regardless of where that money is going to come from so that you will be able to maintain all of the people you have working for you on your research project and to buy all of the reagents needed for that research."

The research that Okwumabua conducts on farm animals has a lot of implications for the general health of humans. "I am particularly interested in what we call zoonotic agents, bacteria that can cause disease in animals, and at the same time, cause disease in humans," he said. "What most people do not understand is that most outbreaks in humans are usually first reported in animals."

In Okwumabua's opinion, there are several factors that are influence the spread of disease worldwide. The first is world travel where someone can be exposed to a disease in China and not show any overt symptoms until after their arrival in the U.S. Meanwhile, they may have spread the disease through sneezing.

The second factor that could influence the spread of disease, in Okwumabua's view, is the exposure people have to bacteria at an early age. "People in Africa are not really as fortunate as here in terms of the medical facilities," he observed. "But their immune systems are very, very tough because right from birth, they start getting exposed to all of these little infections and that is how we build immunity. So at eight years old to adults, their immune system is almost ready to fight any organism. But in America, where they have drinking water and everything sterilized and so on and so forth, they immune system, in my own opinion, is not as strong as what it is in Africa."

One of the biggest factors may be the evolution of bacteria. "We are now having what we call multi-drug resistant bacteria," Okwumabua observed. "These are bacteria that resist several antibiotics that use to kill them in the past. They keep evolving too. So if a bacteria is sensitive to penicillin and then for some reasons the bacteria changes its properties and they are not sensitive anymore to penicillin and you go see your doctor and they give you a penicillin as the antimicrobial, it won't do you any good because the bacteria is going to continue to grow and that is one of the problems we face these days. It's one of the hot topics in research now, as a matter of fact."

Okwumabua's research today may be the first line of defense against a massive outbreak of disease tomorrow. That is a hero in anyone's book.