News about significant grants or other funding received
Finding NEMO: Multidisciplinary Team Searches for the Drugs of the Future
There are many medically important drug targets that current drug discovery technology is not able to address. Collaborative basic research in Chemistry, Biology, and Biochemistry is key to solving these intractable problems to enable the discovery of new classes of drugs. A multidisciplinary team at Boston University, led by Associate Professor of Chemistry Adrian Whitty, […]
Elliott Receives Inaugural Scialog Award
Professor Sean Elliott has received one of the eleven inaugural Scialog Awards sponsored by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. This multi-year program is designed to accelerate the work of 21st-century science by funding early career scientists (either individuals or multi-disciplinary teams) to pursue transformative research, in dialog with their fellow grantees, on crucial issues […]
Björn Reinhard Receives NSF CAREER Award
The National Science Foundation Faculty Early CAREER awards are presented to teacher-scholars who are “most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century.” The Department is proud to announce that this year, Professor Björn Reinhard has received this important award for his proposed research on “Frequency Domain Plasmon Fluctuation Spectroscopy For Single Biopolymer […]
Adrian Whitty and group receive NIH Award to perform quantitative analysis of RET Receptor activation and signaling
The Whitty Group has received a 5-year, $2 million award from the NIH. Growth factors (GFs) are messenger proteins that mediate the signals between cells that regulate critical functions such as cell growth, maturation, and death. In comparison with other medicinally important protein classes (enzymes, ion channels and G protein-coupled receptors) little is known about […]
NIH funds Pinghua Liu and his group to perform mechanistic studies of enzymes in isoprenoid biosynthesis
The goal of this award ($1.9 million over 5 years – 2010-2015) is to characterize the mechanism of a key enzyme in the deoyxylulose biosynthetic pathway as well as identify its key partner proteins. This pathway, identified only in bacteria and plants, produces the required compounds for isoprenoid synthesis. The results of this work could […]
Karen Allen Leads the Bridge Project: Functional Assignment in HAD Superfamily Phsphotransferases
Professor Karen Allen is leading the HAD Bridge Project of the NIH U54 award to the University of Illinois entitled “Collaborative Center for an Enzyme Function Initiative,” ($25 million over 4 years, John Gerlt, PI). Known as “GLUE Grants,” these prestigious awards provide resources to currently funded scientists to form research teams to tackle complex […]
Porco Group Awarded $1.6 million to Investigate Biomimetic Synthesis of Complex Natural Products
Professor John Porco and his group have received a 4-year, $1.6 million award (2010 to 2014) to develop and refine biomimetic syntheses using copper-mediated enantioselective oxidation processes; photochemical cycloaddition employing excited state intramolecular proton transfer (ESIPT); and asymmetric reactions of acylphloroglucinols. Professor Porco and colleagues are applying these methodologies to synthesize complex natural products, including […]
Ellison Medical Foundation Sponsors Tom Tullius to Explore Role of Gene Oxidative Damage in Aging
Professor Tom Tullius has received a 2009 Senior Scholar Award in Aging” from the nonprofit Ellison Medical Foundation. The Foundation supports basic biomedical research on aging relevant to understanding lifespan development processes and age-related diseases and disabilities. The Ellison award supports a new project in the Tullius lab on genome damage and aging, particularly the […]
Reinhard Group Receives NIH Award to Probe Underlying Mechanisms of the Abnormal Behavior of EGFR in Cancer Cells
Professor Bjoern Reinhard and his group have received an R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health, “Illuminating Dynamic Receptor Clustering in the Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Signal Transduction Pathway Using Plasmon Coupling.” The goal of their research is to use near-field interactions between individual nanoparticle labels to probe the underlying mechanisms of the abnormal […]
NIH provides funding to develop nanoparticle-based imaging technology for early cancer detection
Mounting evidence indicates that some RNAs (so called micro RNAs [miRNAs]) play a significant role as oncogenes or tumor suppressors. The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) has funded Professor Björn Reinhard and his group to develop a nanoparticle-based imaging technology for early cancer diagnosis through detection of characteristic miRNAs. The new imaging […]