For almost 20 years, Virginia Commonwealth University’s Chris Kepley, Ph.D., M.B.A., has devoted his research to studying the mechanisms of allergic disease — the sixth leading cause of chronic disease in the U.S.
But only in the last two years has Kepley, an assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology at the VCU School of Medicine, tested a compound called a buckyball. In June, Kepley and a team of researchers from VCU and Luna Innovations Inc. — a private research company based in Roanoke, Va. — released a study showing buckyballs’ ability to block the allergic response.
“No one up to this point has shown that they have this effect on immunological mechanisms,” Kepley said. “It opens up a huge amount of doors of controlling immunological diseases.”
A 1995 graduate of VCU’s School of Medicine, Kepley spent his graduate and doctoral years in the labs of VCU researchers Anne-Marie Irani, M.D., professor of pediatrics and internal medicine, and Larry Schwartz, M.D., Ph.D., professor of internal medicine rheumatology, and microbiology and immunology.
The research he completed in their labs immediately piqued his interest, and still does today.
“I love coming to work every day and I have this inherent curiosity about how things work,” Kepley said.
After completing post-doctoral work at the University of New Mexico, he returned to VCU in 2005.
“Dr. Schwartz’s lab brought me back,” Kepley said. “He’s a world-renowned scientist. A big part of me coming back was to learn good science, and if you want to do that in the field I’m in, you go to Larry Schwartz’s lab.”
Now Schwartz serves as a close collaborator and mentor to Kepley, who has found his lab in the spotlight since the Journal of Immunology published the buckyball study findings in June.
“It’s been very well received,” said Kepley, the principal author of the paper. “It just sounds kind-of sexy, the whole nanotechnology and potential of molecules because you can manipulate them to do what you want.”
The latest use for buckyballs also sets the stage for the development of new therapies for allergy — and maybe one day, a cure.
“We’ll see,” Kepley said. “That’s the next step.”
It could be just the start for what buckyballs can do. Kepley is spending the month of August on sabbatical at Harvard University, where he is studying the effects of buckyballs on arthritis.
Buckyballs also offer hope for diabetes, asthma and many other immunological diseases.
“One day we’re all going to be sprinkling buckyballs on our Wheaties,” Kepley said.
