OB-GYN-L Messages for February, 1999: Re: Bonnie Dunbar

Re: Bonnie Dunbar

From: Jeffrey W. Clemens

clemens@duq.edu

Mon Feb 22 07:28:04 1999

Dr. Bonnie Dunbar is(was?) indeed at Baylor College of Medicine and is a well-respected and excellent researcher. However, it is a bit of a stretch to say that she has worked in autoimmunity and vaccine development for twenty years. She is the author of an important handbook of protein electrophoresis techniques. If I may presume to characterize some of her research, it is actually more directly related to the interests of this list. Over a decade ago, Dr. Dunbar was characterizing the glycoproteins of the mouse zona pellucida. A standard technique is to isolate the protein biochemically and inject it into a rabbit to produce a specific antibody against the protein. Upon doing so with one of the ZP components, Dr. Dunbar and her lab serendipitously realized that the animals' ovaries were being recognized as a target for the immune system. Oocytes were being destroyed as they matured and produced the ZP component. Consequently, the animals were infertile. Thus, the idea of an injectable contraceptive vaccine and Dr. Dunbar's association with vaccine research. I have not followed all of this story since leaving Houston, but the vaccine concept was in clinical VETERINARY trials and was being proposed/tested as a method to control over-population of herbivores without hunting (e.g., whitetail deer in Pennsylvania and African elephants in Kenyan game preserves). The above is in no way meant to detract from Dr. Dunbar's contributions to the Hepatitis B debate, but to recognize her for some really interesting reproductive biology contributions.

Jeff Jeffrey W. Clemens, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Dept. of Biological Sciences Duquesne University Pittsburgh, PA 15282 412-396-4597 Fax-5907 ---------- >...>Of course, these are not about hep B specifically because the research on
>hep B is being
>done now. Dr. Bonnie S. Dunbar, who has worked in autoimmunity and vaccine
>development
>for over twenty years (the past 15 yrs at Baylor Coll of Med in Houston),
>is a respected
>scientist who states in a letter written to Dr. Joyce C Lashof, MD, of the
>Presidential
>Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans Illness, "it is apparent that the serious
>adverse side effects may be much more significant that generally known.
>Because it is
>not clear that adequate long term follow up was collected in the clinical
>trial data,
>many of these effects might not have been observed". She, too, urges caution with
>injecting large populations of low risk newborns. The full text of this
>letter can be
>found at:
>
>http://aspin.asu.edu/msnews/dunbar.htm
>

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