It sounds frightening: a brain-eating amoeba living in stagnant water and soil can cause a rare brain infection. And it’s almost always fatal.
But two Northeastern University researchers have this amoeba in their sights, receiving a National Institutes of Health grant to develop a treatment for amoebic encephalitis.
“We’re really looking to try and develop a new drug to treat this disease, one that’s been developed specifically for this infection, where there currently isn’t any,” says Lori Ferrins, associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences at Northeastern.
Ferrins is collaborating on the grant with Mary Jo Ondrechen, professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Northeastern.
“Our goal is to kill the amoeba,” Ferrins says.
Amoebic encephalitis is a usually fatal brain infection caused by an amoeba that lives in warm, stagnant water and soil.
The amoeba enters the brain through an open wound or the nose, often when patients have jumped into or submerged themselves in water, infecting the brain and causing cysts to form.
The disease is very rare — Ferrins says there may be a “handful of cases every year” — although she notes that amoebic encephalitis is difficult to diagnose and there is no international mandate for reporting the infection.
But Ferrins describes the treatment options as “limited at best” — often consisting of a multi-drug cocktail with antibiotics and antifungal agents.
