Two UC Davis Medical Entomologists Named to NIH Scientific Review Committee

Greg Lanzaro (left) and Shirley Luckhart (right)

DAVIS—Two medical entomologists at the University of California, Davis are newly appointed members of a key National Institutes of Health (NIH) study section that reviews grant applications for scientific excellence.

Gregory Lanzaro and Shirley Luckhart were recently selected to participate in the Vector Biology Study Section, Center for Scientific Review (CRS). They will serve through June 30, 2008. The study section includes 21 scientists throughout the country.

Lanzaro is the director of the UC Mosquito Research Program (UCMRP), director of the UC Davis Center for Vectorborne Diseases (CVEC), and a professor of entomology at UC Davis. Luckhart is an a ssociate professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, UC Davis School of Medicine.

“Members are selected on the basis of their demonstrated competence and achievement in their scientific discipline, as evidenced by the quality of research accomplishments, publications in scientific journals and other significant scientific activities, achievements and honors,” said CRS director Toni Scarpa of Bethesda, Md.

Scarpa said study sections “review grant applications submitted to NIH, make recommendations on these applications to the appropriate NIH national advisory council or board, and survey the status of research in designated fields of science. These functions are of great value to medical and allied research in this country.”

The grant applications involve all aspects of arthropod and molluscan intermediate hosts of parasitic, viral and bacterial pathogens. The overall scientific goal is to yield information relevant to human diseases.

Among the specific areas covered are molecular biology with relevance to vector-borne human pathogens; metabolism and physiology of vectors; genetics of vectors, including population genetics; and genomics, including comparative and functional genomics, and proteomics.

Lanzaro’s areas of expertise include genetics and population biology of mosquitoes that transmit malaria, particularly Anopheles gambiae, the principal vector of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa; and the genetics and molecular biology of sand fly vectors of visceral leishmaniasis in Latin America.

Lanzaro joined the UC Davis entomology faculty in 2002, after serving as a professor in the Department of Pathology and Center for Tropical Diseases at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston. He earlier conducted research as a MacArthur Fellow at the NIH Laboratory of Malaria Research.

Luckhart’s areas of expertise include cell biology and the biochemistry of malaria parasite and mosquito interactions. She joined the UC Davis School of Medicine faculty in 2004 after serving as an associate professor of biochemistry at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Va. She earlier was an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Biometrics at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, Bethesda, and a National Research Council Fellow and research scientist at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Washington, DC.

Both Lanzaro and Luckhart are active in CVEC and are members of the newly formed UC Malaria Research and Control Group, a team of UC scientists and California mosquito abatement experts battling malaria in Africa.

UCMRP, a statewide program of the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, is based in Briggs Hall, UC Davis campus. CVEC is part of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and is closely linked with the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, UC Davis School of Medicine and UCMRP.

More information on the Vector Biology Study Section is online.