When biology department chairman Larry Ruben began his searchfor a new professor, he said it was clear the department wantedsomeone in the area of virology to serve the pre-med students andto educate people on the growing awareness of infectiousviruses.

“There are emerging diseases that come out of nowhere andit turns out they are lethal,” Ruben said. “We wantedto have an expert on hand to understand the nature of theseviruses.”

He found that expert in Robert Harrod, who has been recognizedfor his unique approach to HIV research and a rare form of cancer.Harrod, who interviewed with several universities, came to SMU, hisfirst choice, in August 2002.

“I liked SMU because what I see is a driving force in thebiological sciences,” he said.

Harrod’s has continued his research on HIV while atSMU.

Unlike many researchers, Harrod studies the neural, pathologicaleffects of HIV on the nervous system.

“People have focused on the immunopathways [of thevirus],” Harrod said, “but very little is knownregarding how the virus replicates in the nervoussystem.”

His lab studies the inflammatory and survival signals thenervous system puts out once infected by the virus.

“One of the questions we’re asking is ‘howdoes the viral infection block the signalingpathways?'” Harrod said.

Harrod has a special connection in obtaining central nervoussystem tissue samples infected with HIV-1.

Doctors at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centerprovide him with postmortem tissue samples from people that wereinfected with the virus.

“They had documented clinical brain infections,”Harrod said. “They had the neuropsychological impairmentsassociated with neural AIDS. These people have difficulties inperforming their daily jobs. They become generally forgetful andmay develop severe learning deficiencies.”

Harrod’s research is important because of thebrain’s blood/brain barrier.

Current HIV treatments don’t penetrate the blood/brainbarrier, so the virus remains in the nervous system even if theblood is clear.

“Even if [doctors] can slow the virus from replicating inthe bloodstream, the virus will continue to replicateuncontrollably in the central nervous system,” Harrodsaid.

This is why 10 to 15 years after AIDS patients have beentreated, the disease reoccurs in the bloodstream throughtherapy-resistant virus particles transmitted from the centralnervous system.

“We would like to understand the mechanisms that promoteviral replication in the central nervous system and then how can wetarget and prevent virus replication in the brain,” Harrodsaid. “I think that’s going to be the next breakthrougharea in AIDS research.”

Harrod also does extensive studies of the human retrovirus,HTLV-1, which causes a very rare, incurable cancer, adult T-cellleukemia, that infects the T-cells of the immune system.

Harrod’s lab studies certain proteins the virus codesfor.

These proteins appear to be involved in breaking down thecellular signaling pathways, which in turn causes cells to makecopies of themselves and spread the cancer.

His team looks at how the interactions between the virus andcertain cells lead to T-cell transformation and the development ofcancer.

They are trying to find out how these cells bypass thebody’s checkpoints that would keep a normal cell replicatingor drive an abnormal cell to undergo programmed cell death.

The danger of the disease is that it is incurable and manypeople infected with ATL die of blood clots because the cancerousT-cells divide uncontrollably until blood flow is blocked.

Chemotherapies and radiotherapies are generally effectiveagainst many types of cancers, but HTLV-1-infected T-cellsaren’t affected by these therapies.

The occurrence of ATL is relatively infrequent in the UnitedStates, but is prevalent in South American and Caribbean countriesand Japan.

However, when it is does occur in the United States, it does somost frequent in Texas and Florida, states with a significantpopulation from these areas.

Because it’s uncommon in the United States, it isextremely difficult to get patient blood samples infected with thevirus.

He gets his samples through doctors in Japan from contacts madeduring his post-doctoral research training.

Harrod grew up in Warren, Ark., in a science-orientedfamily.

His father is a high school science teacher, and his brother isan organic chemist.

Harrod first started researching in the chemical engineeringdepartment while an undergraduate at Louisiana Tech. When hedecided that he wanted to pursue research as a career, Harrodstarted taking graduate level classes as senior electives.

He graduated from Louisiana Tech in 1991 with a degree inmicrobiology. He then headed north to work on his doctorate at theUniversity of Maryland in Baltimore.

Harrod graduated from there in 1996, with a doctorate inmolecular and cellular biology.

“After I got my Ph.D, I spent four years as apost-doctoral fellow at the Uniformed Services University of theHealth Sciences [Navy Medical Center] in the department ofmicrobiology and immunology,” Harrod said.

“After that I worked as the cancer training ward fellow atthe National Cancer Institute. That’s where I worked on HTV-1and HIV.”

Harrod spent two years working at the NCI before he joined thebiology department here.

As Harrod tries to build an aggressive research program, he seeshimself as a mentor for the students who work in his lab and wantsthem to succeed.

Harrod said that because he is working on getting the lab going,he doesn’t get to spend much time outside of the lab, andsometimes his work will go late into the night —as late as 4a.m.

His team’s hard work has already paid off.

Graduate student Soumya Awasthi, a second-year doctoral studentworking in his lab, was recently selected to give a presentation onher HTLV-1 research at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houstonon Saturday.

“[Dr. Harrod] is very motivated, and his motivation iscontagious,” sophomore biology major Lowery Rogers said.

“He is amazingly intelligent. There is no limit to hisknowledge in his field.”

Rogers said that Harrod is always very helpful and a lot of funwhen there is work going on.

“It is a very good learning experience for me,”Rogers said, “and Dr. Harrod is a great mentor.”