Biography

Dr. Mbulaiteye is a tenure-track investigator in the Infections and Immunoepidemiology Branch (IIB) in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (DCEG) at the national Cancer Institute (NCI). His research focuses on unraveling the role of infections, immunity, and genetic factors in the etiology of Burkitt lymphoma (BL) and Kaposi sarcoma (KS). BL and KS are endemic in Africa and their risk is substantially increased in the setting of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and/or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).

Dr. Mbulaiteye joined IIB (formerly the Viral Epidemiology Branch) as a Research Fellow in December 2000. He received his primary medical degree from Makerere University, Kampala (1990), and has advanced degrees in epidemiology and biostatistics (M Phil) from the University of Cambridge, U.K. (1994), and in internal medicine (M. Med) from Makerere University (1996). He began his research career at the Uganda Cancer Institute (1994-1997) by leading the fieldwork on a large case-control study to measure the impact of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) on cancer in children and adults. He transitioned to the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) where he tracked the population dynamics of HIV by measuring incidence and prevalence of HIV in a large rural general population in southwest Uganda in a study funded by the U.K. Medical Research Council.

He is a member of the Uganda National Academy of Sciences, the African Organization for Research and Training in Cancer (AORTIC), Darwin College Society, and Cambridge Common Wealth Trust, and is an adjunct lecturer at George Washington University School of Public Health. He is a member of the Editorial Board for the International Journal of Cancer, Frontiers in Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention, and Co-Editor-in-Chief, Infectious Agents and Cancer. At NCI, he currently serves on the DCEG Genotyping Review Committee (GRC), NIH Tenure-Track Investigators Committee. He is a recipient of the DCEG Outstanding Paper by a Fellow (2003), the NCI Directors Investigator Innovation Award (2008) and the NIH Award of Merit (2008), and was featured in an NCI Special Report: A Journey to Discovery, Journal of Minority Medical Students (2009).

Research Interests

Burkitt lymphoma (BL)

My BL studies fall within IIB’s research to understand risk factors for NHL (http://dceg.cancer.gov/iib/research/non-aids-lymphomas). Burkitt lymphoma is the most common childhood tumor in Africa, and infections with malaria and EBV at an early age are widely accepted risk factors. My studies seek to measure the association between malaria markers (parasite prevalence, load, and genotype), immunology (antibdies protective or not for severe clinical malaria), and co-infection (EBV, HIV, stool parasites) with BL. In addition, my studies of age-specific patterns of endemic, sporadic, and AIDS-related BL seek to identify etiological and/or biological factors associated with BL at different ages.Projects include:

• One completed case-control study of BL conducted in Ghana during 1965-1994 to explore novel hypotheses regarding the association of BL with markers of humoral immunity to malaria (protective or not protective for severe malaria), pro-inflammatory cytokines, and host genetic susceptibility factors.
• An ongoing multi-year case-control study of 1500 cases and 3000 controls in three countries in east Africa (called EMBLEM) to evaluate: 1) the association between functional and tag SNPs in malaria-resistance genes with BL; 2) other host genetic polymorphisms associated with BL using genome-wide association methods; and the role of EBV genetic variants in BL.(http://emblem.cancer.gov).
• A tissue-based study of BL in the United States to investigate viral (EBV, HIV) and molecular markers (Bcl-2, MYC, Bcl-6) associated with BL at different ages.
• A pilot effort to better understand EBV genetic diversity through deep sequencing and the possible association between EBV variants and cancers including BL.

Kaposi Sarcoma

Kaposi sarcoma: My research on KS falls within IIB’s research to understand environmental risk factors for KS and HHV8 (http://dceg.cancer.gov/iib/research/ks).I am pursuing studies to test the hypothesis that HHV8 and KS may be related to Th2-immunologic responses, perhaps due to widespread infection with helminthic parasites that leads to HHV8 viral reactivation, replication, infectiousness and dissemination within and among individuals. Projects include:

• An investigation of the prevalence of HHV8 viremia and associated co-factors in a large nationally-representative population-based cohort from Uganda using data from the Uganda HIV/AIDS sero-Behavioral Survey (UHSBS) conducted in 2004 to 2005.

HIV/AIDS and Cancer

HIV/AIDS and Cancer: Using record-linkage methods to investigate the risk of BL, KS, and other cancers in people with HIV infection in Uganda and other resource-poor settings (http://dceg.cancer.gov/iib/research/hivaids).