Chapter 04: The Keeling Center and Research on HIV and Hepatitis C
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Description
Dr. Satterfield recalls how small the Keeling Center was when he arrived in Bastrop and the many challenges he faced caging animals. He recalls the urgent need to create adequate bio-security provisions, as no one knew how AIDS was transmitted. He also notes that because Bastrop is a remote facility, many researchers in Houston didn’t know of their existence (and still do not) but are grateful to discover all the resources they offer. He describes how the faculty grew and became an incubator for collaboration. As an example, he talks about the over 40 protocols conducted with the NIH on hepatitis C and AIDS, which led to the discovery that AIDS is a retrovirus. Dr. Satterfield then goes into detail about his work on hepatitis C, talking about how he and collaborators tested clones of the six strains of the virus to develop a resource for future testing of vaccines. He also notes his work on hepatitis B and D. He returns briefly to talk about the “watershed” hepatitis C study that resulted in a chimpanzee being cleared of the disease. He closes this Chapter by talking about medical conditions that will disqualify an animal from being included in a study.
Identifier
SatterfieldWC_01_20120724_C04
Publication Date
7-24-2012
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
William C. Satterfield, DVM, Oral History Interview, July 24, 2012
Topics Covered
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - An Institutional Unit Joining MD Anderson MD Anderson History Building/Transforming the Institution MD Anderson Snapshot The Researcher Discovery and Success Collaborations Overview Definitions, Explanations, Translations
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Let's go to that moment when you come here. You're recruited, you come to MD Anderson or you come here to the Keeling Center. What were your goals, and what did you find when you came here? What was the center like?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
There were dirt roads all around this center, and it was the Environmental Science Park. A sign at the end of the road said Environmental Science Park. We had our group of chimpanzees that the National Institutes of Health had transferred here for the studies.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
How many animals were there?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
They sent fourteen to begin with, and they all came from California. Some of them were former study animals from Jane Goodall, from Stanford University.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
How big was it?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
We had to set up caging. We had to work out biosafety protocols. We had to do a lot of things that have—they've become more sophisticated over the years. It's better caging for the animals, better enrichment for the animals. To begin with, it was pretty, pretty rudimentary. We'd never go back there again, but at the time, it was the best that we knew we could do and still provide biosecurity for people and for the animals and so forth.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What were some of the biosecurity measures that you were using then?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Separate facilities, separate personnel, clothing, showering—all that stuff was separate. A lot of it was based on my experience from Plum Island where they had biosecurity areas. That was some of the—I incorporated all of the issue—or all of the sort of safeguards that they had there. I felt that those were prudent to go ahead and have here because we didn't know what was—whether it was aerosol or whether it was by blood or feces or spitting. Chimpanzees do all that stuff, so we didn't know what the agent was and how transmissible it was. Turns out it's not very transmissible but still a high pathogen.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So what was the atmosphere like? How many faculty were there? I mean, I really—
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
We didn't have a lot of people here. I was the fifth veterinarian on board, and right after I came, the guy that was here doing large animal left to open his own business. His name was Bob Carpenter. He left, and he opened his own business. Dr. Keeling was here. Dr. Ken Riddle was here. Patricia Alford, who was also an Auburn graduate, was here. She was doing her chimp colony. Then I came on as the AIDS guy.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
The AIDS guy.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Yeah, the AIDS guy, and nobody knew what was causing it. So, I was like, "Oh, great. I don't know how long I'm going to be here. I just hope this is not real catchy."
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Was it an intellectually vibrant atmosphere? I mean, what was the atmosphere like in terms of collegiality and—?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
It was. We were very collegial. Dr. Keeling, he was a great guy. We kind of worked our way through a lot of issues. We were satellite. People didn't know we were out here for the most part. Houston still doesn't know. Ninety percent of Houston still doesn't know that this facility is here. A lot of them heard of Smithville, but very few of them are aware that this facility is here. Most of them—most of the scientists in Houston, when they understand what is available here, they're anxious to take advantage of it, but it's still a day-to-day thing, trying to educate the folks in Houston. I mean, we were still struggling to get facilities here. One of the things that—some of the money that came in through Dr. Purcell's—the NIAID—we got renovation money. We redid the whole back, bought new caging for all of our animals, and part of that money put a lab onto the existing laboratory for basic scientists so that we could have facilities to have a basic scientist work on campus to help us with viral work, because as veterinarians, we did the medicine and the animal work but the lab work—it was not in our area. So we were able to get basic scientists. I hired a basic scientist. In fact, we had a couple of basic— Then I had basic scientists come from Houston then because of some of the work we're doing, both out of Dr. Arlinghaus's laboratory. I had Jagan Sastry, who is a PhD in immunology, and Pramod Nehete, who is a PhD in immunology. Pramod's still on campus, and Jagan's still part of our faculty, but he is in immunology in Houston. Ralph Arlinghaus [Oral History Interview] has been the chair of the Molecular Pathologies Department for years down there. A great guy. All of this collaboration—it's kind of an incubator for collaboration. That gave me an opportunity to work with NIH. We did over forty protocols with NIH in that study.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And this was the AIDS study?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
The AIDS—well, environmentally, it's hepatitis. We did a few AIDS work. We did some AIDS work. We worked with—but mostly it would end up being hepatitis. They built facilities here—outdoor chimpanzee long-term housing—but most of the work ended up being hepatitis work. That was because as we became more sophisticated in learning what the virus was—that it was a retrovirus and that it could grow in chimpanzees, but the chimpanzee was not a good model for it because the chimpanzee can control the virus. They don't develop AIDS, but when that virus is combined with a known lymphotropic virus that is in African monkeys and that's put into Indian rhesus monkeys, it acts just like the AIDS virus. That's what they call a "chimeric virus." You're putting it outside of the HIV and then the inside of the simian virus, so we had what they call, "SHIV", S-H-I-V virus. Tons of research has been done on that, tons of work towards vaccines, and tons of work towards treatment. That's been sort of a gold standard with using smaller animals.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
I mean, if you'd like to reserve discussion of the details of these studies for a little later that's fine but—
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
You can ask—
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
We could certainly— Yeah, I'd be really interested to kind of know. So you had these forty studies. Were they sequential? I mean, did one lead to another, or were they sort of in groups looking at different aspects of it? How did it work?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Some of them were sequential. We did—there were six different strains of hepatitis C, and each one of those strains has sub strains in that. But there were clones. They had to be made genetic clones. We tested those clones for infectivity to develop sort of a resource for future testing vaccines. We did a lot of work on hepatitis B. We did a lot of work on hepatitis D, which is another type of hepatitis virus that requires a prior infection or having a helper virus of hepatitis B available. Then we did vaccine studies on hepatitis C. Some of those were not successful. We did a number of those studies.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
What were some of the successful studies? You said some weren't but—
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
I worked with a group through NIH that was testing some of the new drugs that are now going to be probably going to clinical trials for treating hepatitis C. Since we have animals that were previously infected with hepatitis C, we treated those animals with these drugs and then they looked at the pharmacodynamics—how long the drug lasted in the bloodstream and then also what happens to the viral load, whether it stays the same, goes up, goes down, whether it mutates to another form of the virus. You might suppress one type. You might have predominantly one form of the virus, and then you put a drug on it that suppresses that form. It can mutate, too. They call it an "escape mutation" to another form of the virus. That happened once. As I mentioned, more recently, we looked at a type of treatment that actually was able to clear the virus. From my perspective, that was a real watershed moment. I think that's been repeated in another facility, too, so we're on the right track there. Now whether that will happen in every case for every human—but I think this holds great promise for a lot of people.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So you started that work pretty much immediately when you got here in 1983, and you had this success with, as you called it, the watershed moment, and that happened about a year and a half ago. I mean, that's a lot of years to get to that point.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Yes, it is.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
That's very slow work, slow going.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
It takes a while. People don't realize it, but a lot of the— We might start a study, and that study would go on because these animals live a long time, and this was a slow, slow pathogenesis of the virus. That study might go on for three or four years. I might be working on the same protocol for three to four years, doing followups on it.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So these are truly in vivo studies on animals that really have long life spans.
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Our oldest chimpanzee's in his fifties. We've got several in their fifties now. A lot of our animals are in their thirties. We've got a bunch that are— I've got a big list of thirty-year-olds, plus over thirties. Not too many that are in their teens because of the moratorium.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Now with all the other care that you're giving these animals—you talked about the checkups are sometimes more than yearly checkups—is there a way that you control for the care of the animal for other kinds of diseases versus what's happening with hepatitis C and AIDS, which is what you're really looking at?
William C. Satterfield, DVM:
Yes. Actually, an animal will not go on a study if it has some disqualifying other medical issues like heart conditions. We've got animals here from New Mexico—I'm sorry—from Arizona. We've got animals here from Arizona that have a history of a fungal disease that's endemic there. They won't do those kinds of studies. They have to be, what we consider to be, naïve. They have to be good candidate animals. They have to be screened. We do a lot of due diligence on all other— And we have to consider the animal's overall health. We will not compromise the health of an animal just to put it on a study. We do care about these guys, and we also care about our families, too.
Recommended Citation
Satterfield, William C. DVM and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 04: The Keeling Center and Research on HIV and Hepatitis C" (2012). Interview Chapters. 1506.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1506
Conditions Governing Access
Open
