Hi Reddit, we are M.G. Finn and Alexandre Marques, leaders of a team in the U.S. and Brazil developing vaccines against parasitic diseases. Ask us anything about a potential Leishmania vaccine and how collaborative research takes on devastating diseases.

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ACS AMA

Hello Reddit! We are M.G. Finn and Alexandre Marques, collaborators on the development of vaccines and diagnostic reagents against parasitic diseases. We recently published our research on a potential Leishmania vaccine in ACS Central Science http://ift.tt/2wppwms. For a generalist introduction to leishmaniasis, you can read the coverage from Newsweek http://ift.tt/2h2oZoL

This is Alexandre: I am Associate Professor in the Institute for Biological Sciences, Parasitology Department, at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy (July 1997) and a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology (August 2007). During my doctoral dissertation, I worked with infectious diseases and vaccine development against microbial pathogens. From 2007 to 2012, I did my postdoctoral research in the Biological Sciences Department at The University of Texas at El Paso. My work there involved proteomics for the discovery of novel molecular targets for vaccine development and therapeutic treatment against parasites such as Trypanosoma cruzi, and Leishmania spp. I am currently on sabbatical as a visiting Senior Scientist in the Finn laboratory at Georgia Tech.

And this is M.G. Finn: I am Professor and Chair of the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Before moving here in 2013, I was on the Chemistry faculty at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA for 14 years, and before that I was on the faculty at the University of Virginia. I am also the Editor-in-Chief of ACS Combinatorial Science (http://ift.tt/1Gv2ajI). In my lab, our research starts with the development of reliable chemical reactions – click reactions, which we then use in chemical biology and materials science. We have for many years combined chemical and biological techniques to make virus-like protein nanoparticles that have desired properties, usually for biological applications. The students and postdocs in Alex’s lab and mine in Minas Gerais and Atlanta are working together to make new vaccines against parasitic diseases using these virus-like particles, focusing on carbohydrates and peptides that are unique to the surfaces of the target parasites. Ask us anything about this work, vaccine development, or tropical parasites. But remember that neither of us are medical doctors; while we collaborate with clinicians, we can’t give medical advice.

We’ll be back to start answering your questions at 12pm EST (9am PST; 5pm UTC).

For this AMA Alexandre’s answers are tagged AFM, M.G.’s are MGF.

">Hi Reddit, we are M.G. Finn and Alexandre Marques, leaders of a team in the U.S. and Brazil developing vaccines against parasitic diseases. Ask us anything about a potential Leishmania vaccine and how collaborative research takes on devastating diseases.