David Bundle's research featured in the Journal of the American Chemical Society

David Bundle's research is addressing global health outcomes by improving Brucellosis diagnosis and management. The research is part of a collaboration with Dr. John McGiven from the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency in the UK and is supported by a Gates Foundation Grand Challenges Grant and by an NSERC Discovery Grant.

25 November 2014

Brucellosis is the world's most common bacterial disease that transfers from animals to humans (others include rabies, anthrax and more).

Although Brucellosis is not transmitted from human to human, it represents a serious problem for both animal and human health, causing abortions and infertility in these animals and a grave disease in humans that requires a long and costly antibiotic therapy. Brucellosis strains include: B. abortus preferentially infects cattle, B. melitensis sheep and goats, and B. suis swine and wildlife.

Brucellosis has a disproportionately high impact upon communities within developing countries where there is limited to non-existent controls for infections and where animal production systems are more intimately linked to the human population and sanitary control measures may be less rigorous. In many regions it is an endemic, insidious and embedded disease that reduces human and animal health in combination with a significant detrimental economic effect which perpetuates poverty.

Supported by a Gates Foundation Grand Challenges Grant and a NSERC Discovery grant, David Bundle's laboratory in the Department of Chemistry together with John McGiven from the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency UK chemically synthesized a small array of carbohydrate antigens to screen for the best diagnostic tools for surveillance and control of this disease.

They have discovered a simple, synthetic antigen consisting of two monosaccharides provides a diagnostic test that detects antibodies against the bacteria which are present in the blood of infected animals and humans. This synthetic antigen is superior to the natural antigens currently used for this purpose. The groups' discovery not only eliminates the need to extract and purify these antigens from this highly infectious, pathogenic bacteria, it also eliminates false positive results that occur with the current generation of diagnostic tests.

Their paper "Molecular Recognition of Brucella A and M Antigens Dissected by Synthetic Oligosaccharide Glycoconjugates Leads to a Disaccharide Diagnostic for Brucellosis" is published in the Journal of American Chemical Society and featured on the cover of the November 19, 2014 issue of the journal and is accompanied by a podcast that discusses key elements of the research.