May 10 2021 – With the COVID-19 vaccines on many people’s minds, some may be surprised to learn that we do not yet have vaccines for many common infectious diseases. 
 
Take salmonella, for example, which can infect people through contaminated food, water and animals. According to the World Health Organization, non-typhoidal salmonella infection affects more than 95 million people globally each year, leading to an estimated 2 million deaths annually. There is no approved vaccine for salmonella in humans, and some strains are antibiotic-resistant. 
 
But just as scientists spent decades doing the basic research that made the eventual development of the COVID-19 vaccines possible, University of Florida researchers led by Mariola Edelmann in the department of microbiology and cell science, UF/IFAS College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, are laying the groundwork for an effective vaccine for salmonella and other hard-to-treat bacterial infections.
 
In their study supported by the National Institutes of Health and published in “PLOS Pathogens,” the UF/IFAS scientists demonstrate a novel approach to triggering immunity against salmonella.
 
This approach takes advantage of how cells communicate with each other, said Winnie Hui, first author of the study, which was conducted while she was a doctoral candidate in microbiology and cell science.
 
“Cells communicate with each other through particles called extracellular vesicles or EVs. Think of these like molecular telephones that let cells talk to each other. We wanted to know if some of those messages included information related to immune response,” said Hui, who graduated from the UF/IFAS College of Agricultural and Life Sciences in 2019 and is now a postdoctoral researcher in the UF College of Medicine, division of rheumatology and clinical immunology. 
 
“Host EVs have not been previously studied in the context of fighting enteric bacterial infections, so that is part of what makes our approach new and adds to the field,” said Edelmann, senior author on the study, Hui’s dissertation director and an assistant professor of microbiology and cell science. 
Edelmann hypothesized that a specific type of EVs called exosomes were part of the immune response against salmonella and may one day hold the key to developing a vaccine. 
To test their idea, the research team took exosomes from white blood cells infected with salmonella. Inside those exosomes, which measure just a few dozen nanometers across, they found salmonella antigens, which are bits of salmonella protein known to trigger an immune response. 
 
Next, the researchers wanted to know if these exosomes might function as a vaccine, helping the body build up its defenses against salmonella, said Lisa Emerson, one of the study’s co-authors and a doctoral student in Edelmann’s laboratory. 
“We put the exosomes in ‘nanobubbles’ that the mice inhaled. Later, we ran tests to see how their immune systems responded,” said Emerson, who is in the UF/IFAS College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
 
The researchers found that after they introduced the exosomes containing salmonella antigens, the exosomes localized to tissues that produce mucous, activating specific cells at these sites. Weeks later, mice developed antibodies against salmonella and specific cellular immune responses, which typically target this bacterium for elimination. For the researchers, this is a promising result. 
 
“There are two types of immune responses generated when our bodies encounter a pathogen. The first one is called innate immunity, which is an immediate response to an infection, but it is also less specific. The other response is called adaptive immunity, and this protective response is specifically tailored to a given pathogen, but it also takes longer to develop. Exosomes generated by infected white blood cells stimulated both of these responses in animals,” said Hui. 
 
While these results show promise, more research will be needed before we have a salmonella vaccine that works in humans, Hui said.
 
“Our study has identified a novel role of exosomes in the protective responses against salmonella, but we also think that exosomes can find broader applications for other intestinal infections and beyond,” Edelmann said. 
“Exosomes have this unique capability to encapsulate precious cargo while enabling its targeted delivery to tissue of interest. For many conditions and infections, this precise delivery of therapeutic payload is what makes a difference, and we are currently also evaluating exosomes in delivering cargo to other tissues of choice,” said Edelmannn whose work is supported by several federal funds focused on the roles of extracellular vesicles in bacterial infections and disease and host-directed therapies against intestinal infections. 
 
This information was suppied by Samantha Murray, grenrosa@ufl.edu, 949-735-1076
 
 
 
 
The mission of the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) is to develop knowledge relevant to agricultural, human and natural resources and to make that knowledge available to sustain and enhance the quality of human life. With more than a dozen research facilities, 67 county Extension offices, and award-winning students and faculty in the UF College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, UF/IFAS brings science-based solutions to the state’s agricultural and natural resources industries, and all Florida residents. 
ifas.ufl.edu  |  @UF_IFAS
 


Cape Coral Hospital, HealthPark Medical Center and Lee Memorial Hospital rise
from three stars to four; Gulf Coast Medical Center maintains its four-star ranking
 
May 7, 2021 – High-quality care and patient safety are Lee Health’s top priorities, and the health system is pleased to announce its hospitals have been awarded four stars by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Cape Coral Hospital, HealthPark Medical Center and Lee Memorial Hospital have all risen from three stars in the 2020 rating period to four stars in this period, and Gulf Coast Medical Center has maintained its four-star status. Children’s hospitals are not included in this ranking system. 
 
The four-star ratings reflect the continuous improvements Lee Health takes to provide the highest quality of care to the community it serves. 
 
In the past four years, all Lee Health hospitals have risen from two-stars to four-stars by finding ways to constantly improve patient care. 
 
“We are proud to be recognized by CMS for the high-quality care we provide to the Southwest Florida community,” said Dr. Larry Antonucci, president and chief executive officer of Lee Health. “At Lee Health, we are committed to constant improvement and are always striving to provide the safest, highest level of care possible. Being awarded four stars for our hospitals by CMS is an honor, and I want to thank the entire Lee Health team for their dedication to excellent patient care.” 
 
CMS’s overall star rating is based on how well a hospital performs across different areas of quality, such as treating heart attacks and pneumonia, readmission rates and safety of care. The rating shows how individual hospitals perform compared to all hospitals across the country for the 5 groups or categories of quality measures that make up for the overall star rating.
 
CMS created the Five-Star Quality Rating System to help consumers, their families and caregivers compare hospitals more easily. The scores are based on previously reported quality and safety data points including: patient satisfaction, value and outcomes, among others. 
 
Just last week, Lee Health was recognized by The Leapfrog Group in its Spring 2021 Hospital Safety Grades. Cape Coral Hospital, Gulf Coast Medical Center and Lee Memorial Hospital each earned an “A” grade for the fifth straight reporting period. HealthPark Medical Center earned an “A” grade for the fourth straight reporting period. The Safety Grade assigns letter grades of “A,” “B,” “C,” “D,” and “F” to hospitals across the country based on their performance in preventing medical errors, infections, and other harms. Only 33% of the approximately 2,700 acute care hospitals Leapfrog graded received an “A.”
 
Learn more about Lee Health’s awards and recognitions at www.leehealth.org.
 
 
 
 
 
About Lee Health
Since the opening of the first hospital in 1916, Lee Health has been a health care leader in Southwest Florida, constantly evolving to meet the needs of the community. A non-profit, integrated health care services organization, Lee Health is committed to the well-being of every individual served, focused on healthy living and maintaining good health. Staffed by caring people, inspiring health, services are conveniently located throughout the community in four acute care hospitals, two specialty hospitals, outpatient centers, walk-in medical centers, primary care and specialty physician practices and other services across the continuum of care. Learn more at www.LeeHealth.org.
 


Primary Care Provider Spotlights Early Results for 25K Vaccinated Patients
 
May 7, 2021 – ChenMed, one of the nation’s leading primary care providers, today announces surpassing its mid-March VaxTheNation goal by more than 40 percent, safely administering COVID-19 vaccinations to more than 70,000 at-risk elderly before Mother’s Day, 2021. The community service initiative in 10 states is showing early vaccination benefits for 25,000 Chen, Dedicated, and JenCare Senior Medical Center patients fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
 
The medical practice is reporting only 19 COVID-19 infections; just one COVID-19 hospitalization; and zero COVID-19 deaths among 25,000 fully vaccinated seniors ages 65 and older. “I’m so thrilled that we were able to take vaccines beyond hospitals and large drive-through clinics so that trusted primary care doctors can administer them to their patients, in the neighborhoods where they live,” says Christopher Chen, M.D., ChenMed CEO. “Our doctors and staff have risen to the occasion and have literally saved so many underserved seniors from a real risk of hospitalization or death.”
           
“The biggest clinical trials in history have shown that the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines provide about 95 percent protection,” says Jason Lane, M.D., ChenMed National Medical Director, Clinical Strategy and Outcomes. “By doing whatever it takes for our patients, ChenMed physicians have reduced both COVID-19 infection rates and hospitalizations to just fractions of one percent among the most-at-risk elderly population we serve. And we have not yet seen a single COVID-19 death among our large sample of 25,000 fully-vaccinated seniors.”
 
ChenMed is far below the national average of 785 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 seniors age 65 or older reported by U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During the same time period, the average for ChenMed patients age 65 or older was just 622 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000. That is 20.8 percent fewer COVID-19 deaths during the pandemic because of better primary care delivered by trusted ChenMed physicians.
 
“Our proven approach to primary care and the ChenMed commitment to community service truly are bright spots in the darkness of the pandemic,” notes Dr. Lane. “Right now, every family should be encouraging adult parents and grandparents to get COVID-19 vaccinations, being certain to get both first and second shots of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Plus, adult children wanting special ways to honor Moms for Mother’s Day, or Dads for Father’s Day, should be scheduling and completing COVID-19 vaccinations, too.”
 
In honor of Mother’s Day and surpassing their vaccination goals, ChenMed’s #VaxTheNation team has created a special Mother’s Day COVID-19 vaccination video for people to share with their families to spread the word about the importance of getting vaccinated.
 
“Thankfully, this year, vaccinated seniors will have a much brighter Mother’s Day than in 2020 and will finally get to hug the people they most love again, in person,” says Dr. Chen. “Our Mother’s Day wish this year is for friends and family to encourage each other to get vaccinated, especially people with the highest risk factors including age, health and socioeconomic factors. We can get across the finish line if we each encourage just one other person to get vaccinated – at ChenMed our doctors are ready to serve.”
 
About ChenMed
For seniors most in need of care, high-quality health care often is beyond reach. ChenMed brings concierge-style medicine — and better health outcomes — to the neediest populations. ChenMed is a privately owned medical, management and technology company. A provider of choice for some 20 Medicare Advantage health insurance plans, ChenMed is one of Fortune Magazine’s 2020 “Change the World” companies “taking on society’s unsolved problems – and boosting their business as a result.” ChenMed brands include Chen Senior Medical Center, Dedicated Senior Medical Center, and JenCare Senior Medical Center.


 
Highlights
•New research establishes, for the first time, a link between specific bacteria species and physical manifestations of neurodegenerative diseases.
•The scientists introduced specific bacteria into 1-milimeter-long worm called C. elegans, and the worms developed signs of protein aggregation similar to neurodegeneration seen in humans.
•The study demonstrated that by introducing beneficial bacteria or the molecule they produce, butyrate, protein aggregation and the associated toxicity was decreased. 
•These findings could one day be applied to treatments for diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and ALS
 
 
May 7 2021 – Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and ALS affect millions of adults, but scientists still do not know what causes these diseases, which poses a significant roadblock to developing treatments or preventative measures. 
 
Recent research suggests that people with these conditions exhibit changes in the bacterial composition of their digestive tract. However, given the vast diversity of microbes found in the human body, identifying which bacteria may be associated with neurodegeneration is like finding a needle in a haystack. 
 
Seeking that proverbial needle, scientists at the University of Florida are looking in an unexpected place: the digestive tract of a tiny, translucent worm called Caenorhabditis elegans. 
 
New research published in “PLOS Pathogens” establishes, for the first time, a link between specific bacteria species and physical manifestations of neurodegenerative diseases. The study’s lead author is Alyssa Walker, a microbiology and cell science doctoral candidate in the UF/IFAS College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. 
 
“Looking at the microbiome is a relatively new approach to investigating what causes neurodegenerative diseases. In this study, we were able to show that specific species of bacteria play a role in the development of these conditions,” said Daniel Czyz, Walker’s dissertation advisor. Czyz is the senior author of the study and an assistant professor in the UF/IFAS department of microbiology and cell science. 
 
“We also showed that some other bacteria produce compounds that counteract these ‘bad’ bacteria. Recent studies have shown that patients with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease are deficient in these ‘good’ bacteria, so our findings may help explain that connection and open up an area of future study,” he added.
 
All neurodegenerative diseases can be traced to problems with the way proteins are handled in the body. If proteins are misfolded, they build up and accumulate in tissues. These protein aggregates, as scientists call them, interfere with cell functioning and lead to neurodegenerative disorders.
Czyz and his co-authors wanted to know if introducing certain bacteria into the C. elegans worms would be followed by protein aggregation in the worms’ tissues. 
 
“That is, in fact, what we observed. We have a way of marking the aggregates so they glow green under the microscope. We saw that worms colonized by certain bacteria species were lit up with aggregates that were toxic to tissues, while those colonized by the control bacteria were not,” Czyz said. “This occurred not just in the intestinal tissues, where the bacteria are, but all over the worms’ bodies, in their muscles, nerves and even reproductive organs.”
 
Surprisingly, the offspring of affected worms also showed increased protein aggregation — even though these offspring never encountered the bacteria originally associated with the condition. 
 
“This is very interesting because it suggests that these bacteria generate some sort of a signal that can be passed along to the next generation,” Czyz said. 
 
Worms colonized by the “bad” bacteria also lost mobility, a common symptom of neurodegenerative diseases. 
“A healthy worm moves around by rolling and thrashing. When you pick up a healthy worm, it will roll off the pick, a simple device that we use to handle these tiny animals. But worms with the bad bacteria couldn’t do that because of the appearance of toxic protein aggregates,” explained Walker, who developed this assessment method. 
 
“You could compare the pick to an obstacle course: just as a person with a neurodegenerative disease will have trouble getting across, the same is true with these worms, just at a much smaller scale,” Czyz added.
 
Fun fact: Human eyebrow hairs or eyelashes make for very good picks. 
“The worms are very delicate, so you need a tool that won’t damage them. They are also transparent and have a simple body plan. Studies like ours are possible because these worms normally feed on bacteria,” Czyz said. 
 
“The worms are only one millimeter long, and they each have exactly 959 cells,” Czyz said. “But in many ways, they are a lot like us humans — they have intestines and muscles and nerves, but instead of being composed of billions of cells, each organ is just a handful of cells. They are like living test tubes. Their small size allows us to do experiments in a much more controlled way and answer important questions we can apply in future experiments with higher organisms and, eventually, people.”
 
Currently the Czyz lab is testing hundreds of strains of bacteria found in the human gut to see how they affect protein aggregation in C. elegans. The group is also investigating how bacteria associated with neurodegeneration cause protein misfolding at the molecular level.  
 
Czyz is also interested in possible connections between antibiotic-resistant bacteria and protein misfolding. 
“Almost all of the bacteria we found associated with protein misfolding are also associated with antibiotic-resistant infections in people. However, it will take many more years of research before we can understand what, if any, connection there is between antibiotic resistance and neurodegenerative diseases,” Czyz said.
 
In addition to Walker and Czyz, the study’s co-authors include:
Rohan Bhargava, undergraduate, dual-degree student in microbiology and cell science in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and business administration-general studies in the Warrington College of Business
Alfonzo Vaziriyan-Sani, a master’s student in microbiology and cell science 
Christine Pourciau, doctoral candidate in microbiology and cell science 
Emily Donahue, who graduated last year with a bachelor’s degree in microbiology and cell science from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences 
Autumn Dove, doctoral candidate in microbiology and cell science 
Michael Gebhardt, postdoctoral researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital 
Garrett Ellward, doctoral candidate in microbiology and cell science
Tony Romeo, professor of microbiology and cell science  
 
 

 



Benefit at Banyan Cay Resort & Golf raised nearly $250,000 towards addiction treatment scholarships 
 
May 7 2021 – One hundred golfers teed off on Monday, April 12 at the Jack Nicklaus designed Banyan Cay Resort & Golf in West Palm Beach for Hanley Foundation’s 22nd Annual Golf Classic. The “Monday After the Masters” benefit raised nearly $250,000 that will go directly to the Foundation’s Lifesaver Scholarship Program, which provides crucial access to quality treatment for those suffering from addiction.
 
The annual outdoor benefit began with remarks from Hanley Foundation’s CEO Jan Cairnes and Chief Development Officer Turner Benoit, who thanked this year’s leadership including Co-Chairs Nancy Caraboolad, Virginia Mortara and Nellie Benoit. Honorary chairs included Gary Harris and Suzanne Holmes.
 
“Thank you all for being here today to support Hanley Foundation,” said Turner Benoit. “It’s great to see so many familiar faces in person again. In one way or another, COVID-19 has impacted countless people over the past year. And, it has been especially difficult for those in recovery. As of January, Palm Beach County overdoses have risen by 30 percent, and calls to Hanley Foundation for scholarship support have more than tripled. That’s why it is especially significant this year that all proceeds go toward our treatment scholarship program. Because of your participation in today’s tournament, you are helping us save lives.”
 
Hanley Foundation supporters, event chairs and the Foundation’s Board of Directors rallied around this year’s increased need for lifesaving treatment support within Palm Beach County. Adhering to all COVID-19 safety precautions, the Foundation held its first in-person event since last year prior to the pandemic. Garnering nearly $250,000 in support, the 2021 Golf Classic turned out to be the Foundation’s most successful golf tournament to date. 
 
Mrs. Benoit, who celebrated a special birthday during the tournament, and her team including Scilla Smith, Mari Frankel and Liza Calhoun won the “Lowest Net” score. In addition, the “Lowest Gross” score winners included Drew D’Alessandro, Albert Kurtz, Ahmed Rashwan and Terry Macho.
 
Sponsors for the 2021 Golf Classic included Double Eagle Sponsor: Origins Behavioral HealthCare, LLC; Eagle Sponsor: Hanley Family Foundation; Birdie Sponsor: Anne and Matt Hamilton; BRC Recovery; Cumberland Heights; FHE Health; Futures of Palm Beach; Guardian Recovery Network; Judy and Fritz Van der Grift; Nancy and Geoff Caraboolad; Nellie Benoit; M&T Bank | Wilmington Trust; Stoops Family; Teneo Capital Management; Virginia Mortara; Hospitality Cart Sponsor: A.Z. Pannill; Integrity Medical Billing; Pike & Lustig, LLP – Trial Attorneys; Par Sponsor: Family First Adolescent Services; Goldman Sachs; Marguerite Connelly; Patti Petersen; Tee Sign Sponsor: Suzanne Holmes; Silent Auction Underwriting: Critton, Luttier & Coleman; Pro Golf Polo Shirts Underwriter: Joe Considine, P.A.; Golf Ball Underwriter: The Harris Land Company; Longest Drive Prize Underwriter: Greg Etimos; and Media Sponsor: ESPN West Palm Beach.
 
Hanley Foundation envisions a world free of addiction, leading the way as the largest provider of educational programs that prevent underage drinking in the State of Florida. In addition to offering treatment scholarships to those in need and facilitating trainings to identify the signs of substance misuse, the Foundation works to reduce stigma and change policy through its advocacy efforts. 
 
For more information on Hanley Foundation or to donate, please visit HanleyFoundation.org.