Wilmore C. Webley

Assistant Professor

Phone: 413-577-3139
Fax: 413-545-1578
Email:wilmore@microbio.umass.edu
Mailing address

Ph.D.: Microbiology, University of Massachusetts, 2003

Lab Group Home Page

Research Theme: My research has focused on two parallel themes: (1) understanding chlamydial interaction with the infected host in an attempt to better characterize the diseases that this family of bacteria cause and (2) design and development of interventional and therapeutic strategies to prevent or treat chlamydial infections and associated sequelae.

Research Overview and Approaches: Our research program uses molecular, cell biology, immunology and proteomics tools to study the lifestyle, disease pathologies and development of treatment/prevention strategies for the obligate intracellular bacterial pathogens, Chlamydia . Chlamydia is the most frequently reported bacterial sexually transmitted infection in the United States and many other parts of the developed and developing world. This family of bacteria is also the most common cause of preventable blindness worldwide, causing devastating conjunctivitis in endemic areas (mostly Africa and Asia ). While it is true that there are antibiotics that are relatively effective at treating chlamydial infections, over 80% of these infections are asymptomatic and those affected do not realize they have been infected until severe pathologies are manifested. Efforts to find an effective vaccine against Chlamydia has been largely unsuccessful, mainly because of difficulty in identifying genus-specific antigens that would be effective against all strains for the organism as well as a lack of effective vaccine delivery systems. At the same time, evidence suggests that these bacteria might be involved in diseases other than the ones originally associated with them, prompting new research into the expanded tropism of the organism.

Chlamydia infects mouse macrophages. 96h infection of mouse macrophages, (J774A.1 cells) with C.trachomatis Serovar K. Note the large inclusions fluorescing green, stained with rabbit anti-Chlamydia antibodies.

Specific Research Goals: C. pneumon iae has been strongly associated with cardiovascular disease, reactive arthritis and various chronic respiratory diseases, most notably Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Asthma. My research focuses on (1) Chlamydial Vaccine Display and Delivery System: Our lab has been working on the identification of vaccine targets for Chlamydia and the design of an effective display and delivery system for these genus-specific antigens using the gas vesicles of the Halophilic Archaea, Halobacteirum. This system has the capacity to display a wide range of pathogen proteins on its surface, has strong self-adjuvanting properties, is slowly degraded and does not negatively affect the human host.

Halobacterium NRC 1 growing on agar plate and producing recombinant gas vesicles (as indicated by pink color) displaying chlamydia proteins of interest as vaccine candidates.

(2) Chlamydia is involved in pediatric asthma initiation and exacerbation: Based on the theme of the expanding tropism of chlamydial infections and evidence of frequent chlamydial infection in the lungs of children and adults with reactive airway disease, we have explored the hypothesis that Chlamydia is involved in the initiation and exacerbation of asthma and other chronic respiratory diseases when infection takes place at an early age. Our lab has successfully isolated viable chlamydial organisms from normal blood donors as well as bronchial lavage fluid from the lungs of children with asthma and other chronic respiratory diseases and has shown that the organisms are associated with various immune modulations and pathologies in the respiratory tract.

Viable Chlamydia inclusions found in WBC of normal donor blood. C. pneumoniae inclusions are seen here in the blood smear of a healthy donor. The inclusions have displaced the nuclei of these monocytes. 25% of normal blood donors have viable Chlamydia in their peripheral blood.

Selected Publications

Wilmore C. Webley, Yaphet Tilahun, Kimberly Lay, Katir Patel, Elizabeth S. Stuart, Chester Andrzejewski, Paul S. Salva. Occurrence of Chlamydia trachomatis and Chlamydia pneumoniae in Paediatric Respiratory Infections . Eur Respir J. 2009; 33: 360-367

E.S. Stuart and W. C. Webley. Techcast at UMass #6: Microbiologists Uncover New Disease Connection and Potential Treatment . September 7th, 2008.

Katir K. Patel, MS*, Paul S. Salva, MD, Chester Andrzejewski, MD and Wilmore C. Webley, Ph.D. High Prevalence of Urogenital Mycoplasma in The Bronchial Lavage of Pediatric Respiratory Disease Patients. CHEST, 2008 134: 138003S

Wilmore C. Webley, PhD, Kimberly Lay, BSc, Elizabeth S. Stuart, PhD, Chester Andrzejewski, Jr., MD, PhD and Paul S. Salva, MD, PhD. Chronic Respiratory Disease in Children: The Prevalence of Chlamydia and Mycoplasma. CHEST, 2007, 132 (4): 607b.

Wilmore Webley, Elizabeth Stuart, Frances Cirino, Fran Cahill, Theresa Stec, Chester Andrzejewski. Successful Removal of Chlamydia pneumoniae from Plateletpheresis Products Collected Using Automated Leukoreduction Hemapheresis Techniques. J Clin Apher. 2006 Mar 28.

Frances Cirino, Wilmore C. Webley, Chester Andrzejewski, Elizabeth S. Stuart. Detection of Chlamydia in the peripheral blood cells of normal donors by in vitro culture, immunofluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry techniques. BMC Infect Dis. 2006 Feb 10; 6:23.

Webley WC , Salva PS, Andrzejewski C, Cirino F, West CA , Tilahun Y, Stuart ES., The Bronchial Lavage of Pediatric Patients With Asthma Contains Infectious Chlamydia . Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 171(10):1083-8.15 May 2005.

Webley WC , Norkin LC, Stuart ES. Caveolin-2 associates with intracellular chlamydial inclusions independently of caveolin-1 . BMC Infect Dis. 4(1): 23, 22 Jul 2004.

W. C. Webley , G. J. Vora, E. S. Stuart. Cell surface display of the chlamydial glycolipid exoantigen [GLXA] demonstrated by antibody-dependent complement-mediated cytotoxicity . Curr Microbiol. 2004 Jul; 49(1):13-21.

W. C. Webley , F. Cirino, C. West, C. Andrzejewski, E. S. Stuart, P. S. Salva. Detection of Viable Chlamydophila pneumoniae Organisms in the Blood and Bronchial Lavages of Pediatric Patients with Chronic Bronchial Asthma. Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. 169(7): A586, Apr 2004.

W. Webley , E. Stuart, F. Cirino, F. Cahill, T. Stec, C. Andrzejewski. Successful removal of Chlamydophila pneumoniae from blood by Apheresis leukoreduction . Journal of Clinical Apheresis . 18(2), Jul 2003.

Stuart, Webley , Norkin. Lipid Rafts, Caveolae, Caveolin-1, and Entry by Chlamydiae into Host Cells . Exp Cell Res. 287(1): 67-78, 1 Jul 2003.

Department of Microbiology
203 Morrill Science Center IVN
University of Massachusetts
639 North Pleasant Street
Amherst, MA 01003

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