CMADP Archive News

CMADP PI wins ACS award for distinguished service

February 2021 – The American Chemical Society has named Susan Lunte, Ralph N. Adams Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Director of the Adams Institute, the recipient of the 2021 Roland F. Hirsch Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Analytical Chemistry. The ACS issues this award annually to recognize individuals who, through professional service in activities such as teaching, writing research and administration, have substantially and uniquely enhanced the field of analytical chemistry.

Jonathan Sweedler gives third Ralph N. Adams Lecture at KU

November 2021 – After a year's hiatus due to the pandemic, KU's Chemistry Department was very pleased to welcome its third Adams Lecturer to KU on November 5, 2021. Jonathan V. Sweedler, the James R. Eiszner Family Endowed Chair in Chemistry and Director of the School of Chemical Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, visited campus and gave a presentation on "High Throughput Single Cell Chemical Characterization of the Brain." Dr. Sweedler was presented with a framed, commissioned characture of Ralph "Buzz" Adams and a post-lecture reception was held after his lecture in the atrium of Gray-Little Hall open to all faculty and students.

The Ralph N. Adams Lectureship was established in 2017 to maintain cognizance of Dr. Adams's contributions as a scientist, mentor and humanitarian. The lectureship is jointly organized by KU's Department of Chemistry and the Adams Institute, and was made possible thanks to funding generously donated by two Adams research group alumni, Donald W. Leedy and Theodore Kuwana.

CMADP graduate awarded NIH MIRA grant

September 2021 – Jenny Robinson (Assistant Professor of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering) has been awarded a five-year, $1.25M NIH Maximizing Investigators' Research Award. Dr. Robinson was a Research Project Investigator with COBRE CMADP who graduated from the program in July 2021.

Company co-founded by CMADP graduate wins national competition, secures funding

December 2021 –  Clara Biotech, a start-up company co-founded in 2018 by Mei He (former CMADP Research/Pilot Project Investigator), has won a national competition and has secured funding to move forward with commercialization of its patented ExoRelease platform.

CMADP Genome Sequencing Core supports KU/KDHE COVID-19 wastewater study

July 2020 – KU's Genome Sequencing Core (GSC) facility is pleased to support a joint study between the School of Engineering and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment this summer aimed at detecting COVID-19 virus in the wastewater systems of local communities across Kansas. Belinda Sturm, associate vice chancellor for research and professor of civil, environmental & architectural engineering at KU, has developed an assay to detect the virus's RNA in wastewater samples and is having the GSC run the assay using the facility's Bio-Rad Droplet Digital PCR (ddPCR). Additional information about the KU/KDHE COVID-19 study can be found in a May 4 KU Today article entitled "KU, KDHE partner to trace COVID-19 in wastewater treatment plants", in a July 22 article in KU Today entitled "KU program tracking COVID-19 in wastewater provides early warning to Kansans of virus spread" and on the City of Lawrence's website.

Established at the inception of COBRE CMADP in 2012, the GSC provides next-generation sequencing technologies to academic and industry researchers across the state of Kansas. For more information, please visit the Genome Sequencing Core's website or contact Jennifer Hackett, core director, at jhackett@ku.edu.

CMADP Pilot Project Investigator receives NSF CAREER Award

April 2020 – Congratulations to Urara Hasegawa (Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Kansas State University), who has received a five-year CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation. Dr. Hasegawa's proposed research on "Understanding the biological functions of the gasotransmitter hydrogen sulfide using a polymer engineering approach" focuses on the use of polymeric nanoreactors to develop tools to advance the fundamental understanding of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) in the human body as it relates to cancer, neurological and heart diseases. With this award, she is now an official graduate of the COBRE CMADP!

New KU Chemistry faculty member joins Adams Institute and COBRE CMADP

January 2020 – The KU Chemistry Department welcomes Meredith Hartley, the department's new assistant professor of bioanalytical chemistry who began her faculty appointment at KU in the Spring 2020 semester and joined the Adams Institute's and COBRE CMADP's consortium of researchers. Dr. Hartley comes to KU having completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Oregon Health & Science University in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology’s Program in Chemical Biology. She received a Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry in 2011 from the MIT under the direction of Barbara Imperiali. Her research goals are focused on the intersection of endocrine regulation, lipid metabolism, and neurological disease.

CMADP PI named to Top 100 on The Analytical Scientist 2019 Power List

October 2019 – Susan Lunte, Ralph N. Adams Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Director of the Adams Institute, is part of the Top 100 on this year's The Analytical Scientist 2019 Power List. The Power List celebrates the tremendous range of talent, ingenuity and leadership present across all corners of analytical science, by highlighting the pioneering work and passion of 100 leaders in the field. To identify the top scientists in the field, the publication held open nominations before the candidates were whittled down to the final 100 by a panel of independent judges.

Interviewed by the journal, Dr. Lunte reported that the highlight of her career was becoming the Ralph N. Adams Professor of Bioanalytical Chemistry at KU: "Buzz Adams was an incredible scientist and person. I had the good fortune to know Buzz and work for two alumni from his group (Pete Kissinger and Ted Kuwana). It’s a great honor to have a professorship and run an institute with his name."

Robert Kennedy gives second Ralph N. Adams Lecture at KU

September 2019 – KU's Chemistry Department welcomed its second Adams Lecturer on September 6, 2019, as Robert T. Kennedy, the Hobart H. Willard Distinguished University Professor & Chair of Chemistry and Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Michigan, visited campus and gave a presentation on "The Nanoliter Lab: Droplet Microfluidics for Screening and Sensing." Dr. Kennedy was presented with a framed, commissioned characture of Ralph "Buzz" Adams and a reception was held after his lecture at the top of the Oread Hotel on campus with faculty and students.

The Ralph N. Adams Lectureship was established in 2017 to maintain cognizance of Dr. Adams's contributions as a scientist, mentor and humanitarian. The lectureship is jointly organized by KU's Department of Chemistry and the Adams Institute, and was made possible thanks to funding generously donated by two Adams research group alumni, Donald W. Leedy and Theodore Kuwana.

Two CMADP Research Project Investigators awarded NIH NIGMS Maximizing Investigators Research Awards (MIRA)

Josephine Chandler (Assistant Professor of Molecular Biosciences) was awarded a 5-year, $1.84M NIH MIRA (R35) grant in July 2019 for her research on "Quorum Sensing Evolution and Function in Mixed Bacterial Communities." Chandler's MIRA-funded research seeks to define how quorum sensing alters the dynamics of populations in multispecies communities and patient infections, with the long-term goal of informing efforts to target quorum sensing to control infection populations. She was a Research Project Investigator with COBRE CMADP who graduated from our program in 2018, and we congratulate her on her continued success!

Mei He (Assistant Professor, Chemistry and Chemical & Petroleum Engineering) also received a 5-year, $1.89M MIRA grant from NIH in September 2019 for her research on "3D Biomimetic Lymph Node Engineered Extracellular Vesicles for Understanding the Heterogeneity of Adaptive Immunity." NIH's MIRA research grant program aims to increase the efficiency of NIGMS funding by providing investigators with greater stability and flexibility through these longer-term, more sizable awards. With this award, Dr. He is now an official graduate of the COBRE CMADP! For more details on her MIRA-funded research, please see the news release in KU Today entitled "Researcher to study how extracellular vesicles could enable individualized immunotherapy to fight cancers, other diseases."

NIH's MIRA research grant program aims to increase the efficiency of NIGMS funding by providing early-stage and established investigators with greater stability and flexibility through longer-term, more sizable awards. For more information about the program, please see the NIGMS webpage for details.

CMADP Microfabrication Core Lab completes move to new cleanroom facility in KU's Integrated Science Building

May 2019 – The CMADP's Microfabrication and Microfluidics Core (MMC) has completed its move to a newly constructed, more centrally-located facility on KU's main campus! The MMC has relocated from the Multidisciplinary Research Building on KU's West Campus to a new, significantly larger cleanroom facility within the Integrated Science Building in KU's Central District called the KU Nanofabrication Facility. This facility consists of roughly 10,500 sq.ft. of cleanroom space and additional office space for staff and users. Within the facility, the existing microfabrication capabilities in place in the MMC are combined with groups doing nanofabrication work on campus, including nano-scale lithography and metrology tools contributed from the labs of Dr. Steven Soper, Foundation Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Mechanical Engineering at KU. The expansion of available process technologies in the this facility will enable faculty, students and local businesses to develop novel devices and new materials for clinical chemistry and biomedical applications.

CMADP Graduate's research featured on NIH Director's Blog

March 2019 – Recently graduated CMADP project investigator Yong Zeng’s “lab-on-a-chip” for “liquid biopsy” research was featured in a March 21, 2019 post on Dr. Francis Collins's NIH Director’s Blog. This research, originally reported in a February 2019 issue of Nature Biomedical Engineering, focuses on detecting exosomes (tiny parcels of biological information produced by tumor cells to stimulate tumor growth or metastasize) using a 3D nanoengineering method that mixes and senses biological elements based on a herringbone pattern commonly found in nature.

R. Mark Wightman to give inaugural Ralph N. Adams Lecture at KU

November 2018 – The Department of Chemistry at the University of Kansas is proud to announce the start of a new lecture series in honor of Ralph Adams. R. Mark Wightman, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill will be the Department’s inaugural Adams Lecturer November 15-16, 2018. (Dr. Wightman was a postdoctoral associate in Ralph Adams’s lab at KU 1974-1976.) This new lecture series has been made possible through a generous gift from one of Dr. Adams’s graduate students, Ted Kuwana, and Don Leedy, an undergraduate researcher in Dr. Kuwana’s lab at UC Riverside.

CMADP Research Project Investigator receives Outstanding Undergraduate Alumna award

October 2018 – Jennifer Robinson (Assistant Professor, Chemical & Petroleum Engineering) has received the 2018-2019 Outstanding Undergraduate Alumna award from the Rice University Department of Bioengineering. This annual award honors alumni for their excellence in research, teaching, service, or significant contributions to academia, society, or the bioengineering industry. Dr. Robinson graduated from Rice University in 2009 with a B.S. in Bioengineering and went on to complete her Ph.D. in Bioengineering at Texas A&M University in 2014. She conducted her postdoctoral research at Columbia University in Biomedical Engineering and the College of Dental Medicine, and became a faculty member at KU in 2018. Dr. Robinson's lab is a tissue engineering and biomaterials lab focused on harnessing the native hormone signaling pathways to promote sex-specific regeneration of musculoskeletal tissues.

Search begins for new assistant professor of bioanalytical chemistry at KU

The Department of Chemistry at the University of Kansas is seeking a new Assistant Professor with a strong research emphasis on biomedical applications to contribute to the Department’s existing expertise in bioanalytical chemistry. This individual will join the faculty in Fall 2019 as a member of both the Ralph N. Adams Institute for Bioanalytical Chemistry and the NIH COBRE Center for Molecular Analysis of Disease Pathways at KU.

CMADP Research Project Investigator's research featured on cover of Lab on a Chip issue

June 2018 – Mei He (Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering and Chemistry) and members of her research group are authors of a journal cover story for the June 21, 2018 edition of Lab on a Chip. The research image chosen for the journal's cover illustrates work in microfluidic engineering of exosomes as described in the article, which is included in two of the Lab on a Chip journal's themed collections: Lab on a Chip Recent Review Articles and Personalised Medicine: Liquid Biopsy.

CMADP Research Project Investigator earns departmental teaching award

May 2018 – Assistant Professor Arghya Paul has earned the 2018 Raymond Oenbring Teaching Award for Excellence in Chemical Engineering Education. Awarded annually by KU's Department of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering, Dr. Paul received this student-voted honor in recognition of his excellence in undergraduate teaching.

CMADP Graduate receives promotion and tenure

May 2018 – Yong Zeng (KU Department of Chemistry) has been promoted to associate professor with tenure. Dr. Zeng is a recent CMADP research project investigator (June 2015 - May 2017) whose research interests include quantitative single cell analysis for cancer biology and clinical medicine, high-throughput glycoproteomics and glycomics, and nanomaterial enabled bioanalytical technologies. He earned his PhD from the University of Alberta, Canada  and was a postdoctoral associate at the University of California, Berkeley before becoming a faculty member at KU in 2012.

CMADP PI to receive 2018 ANACHEM Award

March 2018 – Susan Lunte, Ralph N. Adams Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, will be the 2018 recipient of the ANACHEM Award at the FACSS/SciX Conference October 21-26, 2018 in Atlanta, GA. The award, established in 1953, is presented annually by the Association of Analytical Chemists (ANACHEM) to an outstanding analytical chemist based on activities in teaching, research administration or other activity which has advanced the art and science of the field. More information about the history of the award and past recipients can be found on ANACHEM's website.

CMADP Research Project Investigator selected to co-organize international conference

March 2018 – Christian Ray (Assistant Professor, Molecular Biosciences and Center for Computational Biology) was a co-organizer of the UK Royal Society Theo Murphy scientific meeting on Computation by Natural Systems, an international conference on cellular decision making (e.g. decisions to switch to persister state) and how biological systems compute appropriate responses. The conference was held at the Kavli Royal Society Centre in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, UK March 21-22, 2018. Dr. Ray was selected to organize the meeting along with Dominique Chu (University of Kent,UK) and Mikhail Prokopenko (University of Sydney, Australia).

CMADP Research Project Investigator selected as 2018 CMBE Young Innovator

January 2018 – Assistant Professor Arghya Paul has been selected as a 2018 Young Innovator of Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering (CMBE) by the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). As such, Dr. Paul will present his research in a special, two-part invited platform session at the 2018 BMES Meeting in Atlanta, GA, followed by publication of a research paper from his laboratory in the BMES journal Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering. This Young Innovators special issue, set to be published in October 2018, will highlight the work of academic researchers at the rank of Assistant Professor who are conducting innovative bioengineering research at the molecular, cellular and multi-cellular level.

CMADP Project Investigators receive SLAS Readers Choice Award for for co-authored paper

January 2018 – Co-authors Mei He (KU Chemical Engineering, Chemistry) and Yong Zeng (KU Chemistry) received a 2018 SLAS Technology Readers Choice Award for their paper on “Microfluidic Exosome Analysis toward Liquid Biopsy for Cancer,” reflecting the article's popularity among readers through the year 2017. Originally published in the August 2016 issue of SLAS's Journal of Laboratory Automation, the paper reviews the state-of-the-art development of microfluidic technologies for exosome isolation and molecular characterization with emphasis on applications toward liquid biopsy–based analysis, and shares the authors' perspectives on current challenges and future directions of microfluidic exosome analysis.

Free access to the full text of the article, entitled "Microfluidic Exosome Analysis toward Liquid Biopsy for Cancer," is available via PubMed Central.

CMADP PI named AAAS Fellow

November 2017 –Susan Lunte, Ralph N. Adams Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, is one of three University of Kansas professors to be included in the American Association for the Advancement of Science's (AAAS) newest group of fellows! AAAS fellows are annually in recognition of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. Lunte is receiving the honor for pioneering work in the development and application of capillary and microfluidic separations that enable the specific quantification of important markers in biological systems. Her areas of specialization include bioanalytical chemistry, pharmaceutical analysis and analytical neurochemistry.

For more information on all three of KU's latest round of AAAS fellows, please see the full news release in KU Today, entitled "Three KU Professors Named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science."

CMADP Pilot Project Investigator receives NSF CAREER Award

September 2017 – Congratulations to Urara Hasegawa (Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Kansas State University), who has received a five-year CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation. Dr. Hasegawa's proposed research on "Understanding the biological functions of the gasotransmitter hydrogen sulfide using a polymer engineering approach" focuses on the use of polymeric nanoreactors to develop tools to advance the fundamental understanding of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) in the human body as it relates to cancer, neurological and heart diseases. With this award, she is now an official graduate of the COBRE CMADP!

COBRE CMADP awarded Phase 2 grant funding

July 2017 – The COBRE Center for Molecular Analysis of Disease Pathways has been awarded a second phase of NIH grant funding in the amount of $10.8M over the next five years (2017-2022)! With the award of this Phase 2 funding, the CMADP can continue to enable faculty researchers to make breakthroughs in numerous areas of research in health and science as relates to the theme of the center, including innovative new approaches to investigating cancer, neurodegeneration, cardiovascular disease and bacterial infections. The CMADP's research core labs, established during Phase I, will continue to support research at KU and regional institutions with facilities focusing on state of the art genomic analysis, fabrication of lab-on-a-chip devices and synthesis of novel molecular probes.

CMADP Research Project Investigator is co-recipient of NCI R33 grant

Mahy 2017 – Congratulations to Yong Zeng (Assistant Professor of Chemistry at KU), who has been awarded a $1.2M R33 grant from the National Cancer Institute for proposed research on "Integrated Exosomes Profiling for Minimally Invasive Diagnosis and Monitoring of Cancer" along with Andrew Godwin (Director of Molecular Oncology at the KU Medical Center). This grant will allow Zeng and Godwin to continue their work toward developing new technologies to profile circulating exosomes, which are emerging as a new paradigm of "liquid biopsy" for non-invasive cancer diagnosis and monitoring, particularly for use in diagnosing Ewing Sarcoma (EWS). With this award, Zeng is now an official graduate of the COBRE CMADP!

CMADP Graduate, one of ACS's 'Must See Presenters' at Spring 2017 National Meeting, speaks on latest "chemobrain" findings

April 2017 – Michael Johnson (Associate Professor of Chemistry) presented his latest research findings on a possible therapeutic intervention for "chemobrain" at the American Chemical Society's Spring 2017 National Meeting in San Francisco as one of ACS's 20 'Must See Presenters'. "Chemobrain" refers to the cognitive impairment plaguing up to a third of cancer patients following chemotherapy. Johnson's research in this area, initially supported through his his COBRE CMADP Research Project funding, is now supported through an ACS institutional grant to the KU Cancer Center.

For the full story on Johnson's latest findings, please see KU Today's featured article: "Research suggests potential therapy to prevent 'chemobrain' in cancer patients"

CMADP Project Investigators co-author a Top Downloaded article in Lab on a Chip

April 2017 – The Royal Society of Chemistry's journal Lab on a Chip has highlighted a paper co-authored by Mei He (Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at Kansas State) and Yong Zeng (Assistant Professor of Chemistry at KU) in a web collection featuring the journal's 25 most downloaded articles of 2016! Originally appearing as the journal cover story for the January 26, 2016 edition of Lab on a Chip, He's and Zeng's article is titled "A microfluidic ExoSearch chip for multiplexed exosome detection towards blood-based ovarian cancer diagnosis." The paper describes a continuous-flow ExoSearch chip which, when integrated with in situ, multiplexed exosomal marker detection, offers an essentially needed platform for utilization of exosomes in clinical cancer diagnosis.

Free access to the full text of the article, entitled "A Microfluidic ExoSearch Chip for Multiplexed Exosome Detection Towards Blood-based Ovarian Cancer Diagnosis" in Lab on a Chip is available via PubMed Central.

CMADP Co-I awarded new R01 grant from NIH's National Cancer Institute

Blake Peterson (KU Regents Distinguished Professor of Medicinal Chemistry) received an R01 grant from the NIH's National Cancer Institute for his project entitled "Synthetic Lethal Targeting of Growth Factor Receptors". This project proposes a new platform for targeted drug delivery directed at treatment of diverse metastatic cancers that are driven by pairs of the growth factor receptors EGFR, HER2, and/or HER3. This strategy is designed to enhance the selectivity of anticancer antibody-drug conjugates to allow eradication of all cancer cells in patients without harming normal cells. New strategies are needed because existing anticancer antibody-drug conjugates only modestly improve survival in many patients, and adverse toxic effects are common.

CMADP Co-I receives Mathers Foundation grant for study of cell biology

October 2016 – The G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Charitable Foundation has awarded Blake Peterson (KU Regents Distinguished Professor of Medicinal Chemistry) a three-year, $500,000 grant for his proposed studies in fundamental cell biology that could one day lead to important discoveries in translational research. Peterson's project seeks to create synthetic molecules designed to mimic receptors found on cell surfaces in an effort to allow reactivation of defective signaling pathways. The Mathers Foundation was established in 1975 to support fundamental basic research in the life sciences at academic and independent research institutions across the United States.

CMADP Graduate receives NIGMS Pathway to Independence Award

September 2016 – Congratulations to Robert Unckless (Assistant Professor of Molecular Biosciences) on receiving a Pathway to Independence Award from the NIH's National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)! Unckless's project "Antimicrobial peptides as models for the evolution of gene duplication" seeks to understand the forces that lead to differences in the copy number of individual genes using the immune system as a model. The project will employ molecular evolutionary analysis, functional genetic manipulation, and theoretical model development to test hypotheses related to subfunctionalization and neofunctionalization in antimicrobial peptide genes across the genus Drosophila. The data collected will give specific insight into the evolution of innate immune systems and will be illustrative of gene family evolution in general.

CMADP Research Project Investigator is co-investigator on new NIH, NSF grants

August 2016 – Josephine Chandler (Assistant Professor of Molecular Biosciences) has been named a co-investigator on two new NIH and NSF grants. Chandler will be working with Mario Rivera (PI, KU, Chemistry), Blake Peterson (KU, Medicinal Chemistry) and Richard Bunce (Oklahoma State, Chemistry) on an NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease research project grant entitled “Chemical tools for perturbing iron homeostasis in P. aeruginosa,” which proposes to validate iron homeostasis as a new target for future development of antibiotics.

Chandler and Rivera will also be working on “Protein interactions regulate iron storage and utilization in bacteria,” a Division of Molecular and Cellular Bioscience award from the NSF, which aims to fill a major gap in fundamental understanding of bacterial iron metabolism in the pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Chandler's contribution to both projects will be to provide consultation on genetics and molecular biology approaches to evaluate some of the consequences of disrupting iron homeostasis in P. aeruginosa.

CMADP Research Project Investigator awarded NIH R21 grant

August 2016 – Yong Zeng (Assistant Professor of Chemistry at KU) has received a two-year R21 grant from the NIH's National Cancer Institute for his project "Integrated Digital Microfluidic Platforms for Next-Generation Glycomics." Zeng's proposed work aims to develop a new biomedical microsystem that can catalyze breakthroughs in elucidating the pathological roles of protein glycosylation and in developing reliable biomarkers for early diagnosis and better treatment of disease. The microsystem will also be adaptable for potential use in point-of-care and clinical settings.

CMADP Co-I receives NIH R56 bridging grant

Erik Lundquist (Professor of Molecular Biosciences) has been awarded an R56 bridging grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke entitled "Regulation of growth cone protrusion in Netrin-mediated axon repulsion”. Axon guidance is a fundamental mechanism of wiring the nervous system into circuits during development. Work supported by this award will delve into the basic mechanisms of axon guidance in the model organism nematode C. elegans, which will be relevant to human neurodevelopment disorders and nervous system recovery after stroke or physical trauma.

CMADP Graduate's 'chemo brain' research featured in ACS Chemical Neuroscience, C&E News, other outlets

May 2016 – Research done in the laboratory of Michael Johnson (Associate Professor of Chemistry) on ‘chemobrain’, a neurological condition caused by the use of cancer chemotherapy agents, was recently featured in Chemical and Engineering News and was published in the journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience, receiving an ACS Editors' Choice award and being featured on the journal's cover. Patients with 'chemobrain' often have deficits in long and short term memory as well as processing speed. Prof. Johnson’s team used sophisticated electrochemical measurements in rats treated with carboplatin, a commonly used chemotherapy agent, to determine that the release of dopamine and serotonin, neurotransmitters involved in cognition, motor control, and addiction, are diminished even though overall levels within the brain are unchanged.

Free access to the full text of the article, entitled "Impaired Brain Dopamine and Serotonin Release and Uptake in Wistar Rats Following Treatment with Carboplatin" in ACS Chemical Neuroscience is available via PubMed Central.

CMADP Graduate receives promotion and tenure

Prajna Dhar (KU Department of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering) has been promoted to associate professor with tenure. Dr. Dhar is one of the CMADP's inaugural project investigators (2012-2015) and was also named a KU Women of Distinction honoree for the 2015-2016 academic year. Before coming to KU in 2010, she earned her PhD in Physical Chemistry from Florida State University and was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Joseph Zasadzinski at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dhar's research at KU primarily focuses on understanding nature’s rules that govern biological self-assembled processes, in order to better mimic nature and design new treatments for various diseases.

CMADP Graduate part of international team to discover new information about evolution of multicellular organisms

Bradley Olson (Assistant Professor of Biology at Kansas State University) is part of an international team of researchers featured in a recent K-State press release, entitled "Pond scum and the gene pool: One critical gene in green algae responsible for multicellular evolution, understanding of cancer origin" for their work in multicellular evolution and possible origin of cancer. Olson and his colleagues compared genomes found in algae and discovered one particular gene they believe responsible for the evolution of multicellular organisms. The significance of the discovery as it relates to cancer is that the gene also appears to be a tumor suppressor.

Additional details about the team's research can be found in their article in Nature Communications. Olson's portion of the project was funded in part by his former COBRE CMADP Pilot Project award for research on multicellular evolution by reprogramming cell cycle regulation.

CMADP Research Project Investigator awarded NIH R21 grant

March 2016 – Congratulations to Jodi McGill (Assistant Professor, Diagnostic Medicine & Pathobiology at Kansas State University's College of Veterinary Medicine) on receiving a two-year R21 grant from the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)! McGill's exploratory studies on "Efficacy of a Novel Nanoparticle Vaccine and Nutrition During RSV Infection" will use the natural host-pathogen model of bovine RSV infection in infant calves to test the efficacy of a novel biopolymer based vaccine, and to determine the role of vitamin A on the immune response to RSV infection.

CMADP External Advisory Board member becomes KU Foundation Distinguished Professor

December 2015 – Steven Soper, professor in the departments of Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), has been named KU's 10th Foundation Distinguished Professor. Soper is a leading international researcher in developing new technologies that have important applications for disease detection, as well as a KU alumnus. He will return to KU’s Department of Chemistry on July 1, 2016, and hold an appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering as well.

CMADP Co-I named 2015 AAAS Fellow

Erik Lundquist (Professor of Molecular Biosciences) has been elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). AAAS Fellows are elected in recognition of their contributions to innovation, education and scientific leadership. One of only 347 Fellows elected in 2015, Lundquist was recognized by AAAS for his for distinguished contributions to understanding molecular mechanisms of nervous system development, including axon guidance, using modern genetic and in vivo approaches.

Lundquist will be recognized in a Fellows Forum at the February 2016 AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. 

CMADP Research Project Investigator awarded NIH R01 grant

September 2015 – The NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development has awarded Michael Veeman (Assistant Professor of Biology at Kansas State University) the first R01 grant of his career for his proposed research on "Morphogenetic Effector Networks in the Ciona Notochord". This research integrates state of the art methods for transcriptional profiling, targeted gene disruption, and quantitative multidimensional imaging into a systems biology approach to dissecting morphogenetic effector networks in a carefully chosen model organ, the Ciona notochord. Congratulations and best wishes to our latest COBRE CMADP graduate!

CMADP Graduate named a KU Women of Distinction honoree

August 2015 – Prajna Dhar (Assistant Professor of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering at KU and recent graduate of the CMADP) has been named a KU Women of Distinction honoree for the 2015-2016 academic year by the Emily Taylor Center for Women & Gender Equity. Dhar is featured on Emily Taylor Center's annual Women of Distinction Calendar, which recognizes KU women students, staff, faculty and alumnae for their achievements. The calendar is available to view via Emily Taylor Center's website.

CMADP Research Project Investigator receives promotion and tenure

May 2015 – Mizuki Azuma (KU Department of Molecular Biosciences) has been promoted to associate professor with tenure. Dr. Azuma is one of the CMADP's inaugural project investigators (July 2012 - June 2015). She earned her PhD at The Osaka University (Japan), was a postdoctoral fellow at the NICHD/NIH, and was a staff scientist at the NCI/NIH. Her laboratory aims to elucidate the molecular pathogenesis of a childhood bone cancer, Ewing sarcoma.

Silicon Prairie International Microfluidics Symposium

November 2014 – On November 1, 2014, more than 60 people gathered at KU for the Silicon Prairie International Microfluidics Symposium (SPIMS), which included a poster session and a series of 8 short talks by experts in the field of microfluidics. During the poster session, attendees were also provided tours of CMADP's Microfabrication and Microfluidics Core facilities in the Multidisciplinary Research Building on KU’s west campus.

CMADP Pilot Project Investigator receives Army Research Office Young Investigator Award

August 2014 – Shenqiang Ren, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, has earned an Army Research Office Young Investigator Award grant to conduct research on cutting-edge photovoltaic technology intended to give American forces tactical advantages in the field. His work focuses on materials chemistry, synthesis and self-assembly of low-dimensional nanomaterials.

CMADP faculty researchers form consortium, launch lecture series on aggression and substance abuse

April 2014 – Erik Lundquist of Molecular Biosciences (CMADP Co-I) and Marco Bortolato of Pharmacology and Toxicology (CMADP Pilot Project Investigator), along with Merlin Butler and Ann Manzardo of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences (KUMC), and Paula Fite of Clinical Child Psychology, were awarded a three-year University of Kansas Level I Strategic Initiative Grant entitled “Developing a Research Consortium on Aggression and Drug Abuse.” The consortium (ConTRADA) will be the first multidisciplinary network in the country for studying how and why pathological impulsive aggression and substance abuse and addition disorders exist concurrently but independently in a subject. Using a unique combination of clinical and preclinical studies, the goal is to develop effective preventive and therapeutic interventions.

Members of CMADP Research Project Investigator's group honored for research posters, presentations at bioscience symposium

January 2014 – One graduate student and one undergraduate from the research group of Prof. Michael Johnson (Associate Professor of Chemistry) were among eighteen undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral students honored for their scientific research presentations at the 12th annual Kansas IDeA (Institutional Development Awards) Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (K-INBRE) symposium Jan. 18-19, 2014.

The annual symposium is part of the K-INBRE initiative to identify and recruit promising college science students into careers in biomedical research in Kansas. Led by KU Medical Center, 10 campuses in Kansas and northern Oklahoma are a part of this collaborative network.

Rachel Gehringer
doctoral student in chemistry, Mike Johnson Group
“Measurements of serotonin release in Huntington’s disease model R6/2 mice,” poster presentation.

Ryan Limbocker
junior in chemistry, Mike Johnson Group
“Neurochemical analysis of Chemobrain,” poster presentation.

CMADP PI Chosen One of 100 Top Analytical Scientists

October 2013 – Congratulations to Susan Lunte, Ralph N. Adams Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, for being named one of the 100 most influential analytical scientists in the world. Dr. Lunte is one of only six women named to the list. Read more about the other professionals named to the list by The Analytical Scientist, an international publication.

CMADP Pilot Project Investigator pursuing new treatments for impulsive aggression

Marco Bortolato, Assistant Professor of Pharmacology & Toxicology, has been featured again in a KU Today article for his research examining the neurobiological basis of impulsive aggression. His goal is to unlock the condition’s underlying mechanisms and ultimately develop treatments for it. His studies on impulsive aggression are funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health, as well as a JR and Inez Jay grant from KU's Higuchi Biosciences Center and his COBRE CMADP Pilot Project award.

CMADP PI Contributes to "Tips for Publishing" Video

Susan Lunte is featured in the opening segment of a recently produced video from the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). The video features top tips from world-leading scientists and Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) staff on how to write and publish a great scientific paper.  Sue recently finished a 3-year term as Associate Editor for Analytical Methods, one of the newest of RSCs numerous scientific journals.  She is currently Editor-in-Chief of the journal.

CMADP Pilot Project Investigator's research featured on cover of Advanced Materials issue

July 2013 – Shenqiang Ren, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, and members of his research group are authors of a journal cover story for the July 5, 2013 edition of Advanced Materials. The research image chosen for the journal's cover illustrates work with carbon nanotubes as described in Ren's article: Xie, Y., Gong, M., Shastry, T. A., Lohrman, J., Hersam, M. C., Ren, S. Broad-Spectral-Response Nanocarbon Bulk-Heterojunction Excitonic Photodetectors. Adv. Mater., 2013, 25(25): 3433-7.

CMADP Research Project Investigator receives School of Engineering award

June 2013 – Prajna Dhar, Assistant Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, was selected by a School of Engineering faculty committee to receive the Miller Professional Development Award for Research. Dhar’s research focuses on furthering the understanding of respiratory diseases, including work on the effects of inhaled carbon nanoparticles on lung function. She also received a Leading Light Award from KU in March 2013 for earning more than $1 million in research funding during the previous fiscal year.

CMADP Pilot Project Investigator researches new treatments for Tourette syndrome

May 2013 – Marco Bortolato, Assistant Professor of Pharmacology & Toxicology, was featured in a KU Today article for his research on new treatments with fewer side effects for people with Tourette syndrome, with the hope of unlocking the syndrome's underlying neurological mechanisms. In a previous study, Bortolato first identified the involvement of a particular neurological inhibitor in Tourette syndrome using animal models, and is continuing this research with funding from a COBRE CMADP Pilot Project award.

CMADP Research Project image featured on NIH Director's Blog and NIGMS Biomedical Beat

March 2013 – A striking image of the interaction between lung surfactant and carbon nanoparticles captured by Dr. Prajna Dhar has been featured on Dr. Francis Collins's NIH Director's Blog and in Biomedical Beat, a monthly digest of research news from NIH's National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS).

The microscopic image of lung surfactant illustrates research described in the January 4, 2012 issue of Biophysical Journal (Dhar. P., Eck, E., Israelachvili, J. N., Lee, D. W., Min, Y., Ramachandran, A., Waring, A. J., Zasadzinski, J. A. Lipid-Protein Interactions Alter Line Tensions and Domain Size Distributions in Lung Surfactant Monolayers. Biophys. J. 2012 Jan 4, 102(1): 56-65). Free access to the full text of the article is available via PubMed Central.

CMADP Research Project image earns first place in Art of Science contest

February 2013 – A microscopic research image from the laboratory of Prajna Dhar, Assistant Professor of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering, has earned first place in the Biophysical Society's Art of Science Image Contest. Over 30 images were submitted for the contest, and the 10 top entries were voted upon by attendees of the Biophysical Society's February 2013 annual meeting in Philadelphia, PA.