Malaria Researcher Will Present NIAID Neva Lecture, Mar. 24
NIAID will hold the Franklin A. Neva Memorial Lecture on Thursday, Mar. 24, at 11 a.m. in Lipsett Amphitheater, Bldg. 10. Dr. Karl Seydel will present “Dissecting the Pathophysiology of Cerebral Malaria.”
Seydel is interested in the clinical heterogeneity of malarial disease. While some children with malaria have life-threatening symptoms with a relatively low level of parasites in their blood, others have no symptoms but a large number of parasites in their blood. He has recently identified levels of a parasite protein, pHRP2, to be an accurate marker for those children who will progress from mild disease to life-threatening severe disease. He has also recently found that massive brain swelling is a powerful predictor of death in children with cerebral malaria.
Seydel splits his time between clinical and research duties in Blantyre, Malawi, where he has been overseeing the establishment of a Molecular and Genomics Laboratory.
Seydel is assistant professor in the College of Osteopathic Medicine at Michigan State University and director of the Molecular and Genomics Laboratory at the University of Malawi College of Medicine in Blantyre. He earned medical and doctoral degrees in 1999 from Washington University in St. Louis, where he participated in its Medical Scientist Training Program.
Seydel joined the faculty of Michigan State University’s department of osteopathic specialties after working for 6 years as a fellow at NIAID’s Laboratory of Malaria and Vector Research. He holds M.S. and B.S. degrees in biological sciences from Stanford University.
The lecture series honors Neva, a noted virologist, parasitologist and clinician and former chief of NIAID’s Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases. He died in 2011.