A shout-out to MD/PhD student Lauren “Clai” Morehead, who just received a 2022 Medical Student Research Award from the Melanoma Research Foundation. The grant is the latest honor for Clai, who has presented nationally and garnered acclaim for her research into potential treatments for melanoma with mentors Dr. Alan Tackett and Dr. Isabelle Racine Miousse in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute. Well done!

The Melanoma Research Foundation (MRF) has been awarding Medical Student Research Grants since 2011 and since that time, 80 grants have been awarded to students at 46 different institutions. The purpose of this one-year, $3,000 grant is to promote research opportunities to medical students early in their careers by funding clinical or laboratory-based research projects focused on better understanding the prevention, biology and treatment of melanoma, including cutaneous, ocular, mucosal, pediatric, etc.

Discovery of Novel Reductive Elimination Pathway for 10-Hydroxywarfarin.
Pouncey DL, Barnette DA, Sinnott RW, Phillips SJ, Flynn NR, Hendrickson HP, Swamidass SJ, Miller GP.
Front Pharmacol. 2022

The anti-COVID-19 Drug Remdesivir Promotes Oncogenic Herpesviruses Reactivation through Regulation of Intracellular Signaling Pathways.
Chen J, Dai L, Kendrick S, Post SR, Qin Z.
Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2022

Multiomic analysis identifies CPT1A as a potential therapeutic target in platinum-refractory, high-grade serous ovarian cancer.
Huang D, Chowdhury S, Wang H, Savage SR, Ivey RG, Kennedy JJ, Whiteaker JR, Lin C, Hou X, Oberg AL, Larson MC, Eskandari N, Delisi DA, Gentile S, Huntoon CJ, Voytovich UJ, Shire ZJ, Yu Q, Gygi SP, Hoofnagle AN, Herbert ZT, Lorentzen TD, Calinawan A, Karnitz LM, Weroha SJ, Kaufmann SH, Zhang B, Wang P, Birrer MJ, Paulovich AG.
Cell Rep Med. 2021

A Functional Precision Medicine Pipeline Combines Comparative Transcriptomics and Tumor Organoid Modeling to Identify Bespoke Treatment Strategies for Glioblastoma.
Reed MR, Lyle AG, De Loose A, Maddukuri L, Learned K, Beale HC, Kephart ET, Cheney A, van den Bout A, Lee MP, Hundley KN, Smith AM, DesRochers TM, Vibat CRT, Gokden M, Salama S, Wardell CP, Eoff RL, Vaske OM, Rodriguez A.
Cells. 2021

Molecular mechanisms for environmentally induced and evolutionarily rapid redistribution (plasticity) of meiotic recombination.
Protacio RU, Mukiza TO, Davidson MK, Wahls WP.
Genetics. 2021

RNA helicases required for viral propagation in humans.
Marecki JC, Belachew B, Gao J, Raney KD.
Enzymes. 2021

Site-Specific Synthesis of Oligonucleotides Containing 6-Oxo-M1dG, the Genomic Metabolite of M1dG, and Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry Analysis of Its In Vitro Bypass by Human Polymerase ι.
Christov PP, Richie-Jannetta R, Kingsley PJ, Vemulapalli A, Kim K, Sulikowski GA, Rizzo CJ, Ketkar A, Eoff RL, Rouzer CA, Marnett LJ.
Chem Res Toxicol. 2021

Impact of homologous recombination status and responses with veliparib combined with first-line chemotherapy in ovarian cancer in the Phase 3 VELIA/GOG-3005 study.
Swisher EM, Aghajanian C, O’Malley DM, Fleming GF, Kaufmann SH, Levine DA, Birrer MJ, Moore KN, Spirtos NM, Shahin MS, Reid TJ, Friedlander M, Steffensen KD, Okamoto A, Sehgal V, Ansell PJ, Dinh MH, Bookman MA, Coleman RL.
Gynecol Oncol. 202

CYP2C9 and 3A4 play opposing roles in bioactivation and detoxification of diphenylamine NSAIDs.
Schleiff MA, Crosby S, Blue M, Schleiff BM, Boysen G, Miller GP.
Biochem Pharmacol. 2021

A structural feature of Dda helicase which enhances displacement of streptavidin and trp repressor from DNA.
Byrd AK, Malone EG, Hazeslip L, Zafar MK, Harrison DK, Thompson MD, Gao J, Perumal SK, Marecki JC, Raney KD.
Protein Sci. 2021

Clinical implications of loss of bone marrow minimal residual disease negativity in multiple myeloma.
Mohan M, Kendrick S, Szabo A, Yarlagadda NK, Atwal D, Pandey Y, Roy AM, Parikh R, Lopez J, Thanendrarajan S, Schinke C, Alapat D, Sawyer JR, Tian E, Tricot G, van Rhee F, Zangari M.
Blood Adv. 2021

Utilization of a 3-D tissue engineered model to investigate the effects of perfusion on gynecologic cancer biology.
Martinez A, Buckley MS, Scalise CB, Wang D, Katre AA, Birrer MJ, Berry JL, Arend RC.
J Tissue Eng. 2021

Risk stratification after recurrence of human papillomavirus (HPV)-related and non-HPV-related oropharyngeal cancer: A secondary analysis of NRG Oncology RTOG 0129 and 0522.
Bigelow EO, Harris J, Fakhry C, Gillison ML, Nguyen-Tân PF, Rosenthal DI, Frank SJ, Nair SG, Bahig H, Ridge JA, Caudell J, Donaldson C, Clifford BT, Shenouda G, Birrer MJ, Chen Y, Le QT.
Head Neck. 2021

Milk Formula Diet Alters Bacterial and Host Protein Profile in Comparison to Human Milk Diet in Neonatal Piglet Model.
Rosa F, Zybailov BL, Glazko GV, Rahmatallah Y, Byrum S, Mackintosh SG, Bowlin AK, Yeruva L.
Nutrients. 2021

An article by Dr. Duah Alkam, Assistant Staff Scientist in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology working in the Bioinformatics core, and colleagues has been one of the most popular articles in the journal Microbial Genomics this fall. The article – the journal’s third most read in both October and November – was part of her thesis project for her Ph.D. in the Graduate Program in Interdisciplinary Biomedical Sciences, which she completed earlier this year. As a graduate student, she worked with Dr. Mark Smeltzer, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, and Dr. David Ussery, Professor of Biomedical Informatics. Great job!

Is amplification bias consequential in transposon sequencing (TnSeq) assays? A case study with a Staphylococcus aureus TnSeq library subjected to PCR-based and amplification-free enrichment methods.
Alkam D, Wongsurawat T, Nookaew I, Richardson AR, Ussery D, Smeltzer MS, Jenjaroenpun P.
Microb Genom.

A highly annotated database of genes associated with platinum resistance in cancer.
Huang D, Savage SR, Calinawan AP, Lin C, Zhang B, Wang P, Starr TK, Birrer MJ, Paulovich AG.
Oncogene.

Raman spectroscopy and machine learning reveals early tumor microenvironmental changes induced by immunotherapy.
Paidi SK, Troncoso JR, Raj P, Monterroso Diaz P, Ivers JD, Lee DE, Avaritt NL, Gies AJ, Quick CM, Byrum SD, Tackett AJ, Rajaram N, Barman I.
Cancer Res.

Biobanked Glioblastoma Patient-Derived Organoids as a Precision Medicine Model to Study Inhibition of Invasion.
Darrigues E, Zhao EH, De Loose A, Lee MP, Borrelli MJ, Eoff RL, Galileo DS, Penthala NR, Crooks PA, Rodriguez A.
Int J Mol Sci.