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  1. University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
  2. College of Medicine
  3. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
  4. Author: Chris Lesher

Chris Lesher

UAMS Translational Research Institute Names Six Entrepreneurship Scholars

The UAMS Translational Research Institute (TRI) Health Sciences Innovation and Entrepreneurship (HSIE) Postdoctoral Training Program has named six postdoctoral scholars for its class of 2023. The scholars, selected in a competitive application process, will begin two years of mentored entrepreneurship training July 1.

The program, which includes stipends up to $57,000 per year, is designed to help promising scientists more quickly move their discoveries into everyday practice by teaching them commercialization and team science skills.

The HSIE Postdoctoral Scholars – all from the UAMS College of Medicine – their research project plans and mentors are:

Laura Ewing

Laura Ewing, Ph.D., Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute. Her project will focus on identifying predictors of the development, progression or recurrence of different types of ovarian cancer.
Mentor: Michael Birrer, M.D., Ph.D.

Kindann Fawcett

Kindann Fawcett, Ph.D., Department of Pediatric Neurology at Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH). Her project will focus on development of a tool to assess risk and best practices in regards to nutrition and its role in the standard care provided for patients at ACH and UAMS. Secondly, she will focus on the creation of a digital media and virtual, interactive learning platform for nutrition and exercise curriculum to educate the youth of Arkansas.
Mentor: Aravindhan Veerapandiyan, M.D.

Tiffany Miles

Tiffany Miles, Ph.D., Department of Neurobiology and Developmental Sciences.
Her project will focus on hormonal deficiencies related to obesity and then establishing a platform to educate Arkansans on the impact of maternal nutrition in offspring development.
Mentor: Angus MacNicol, Ph.D.

Thomas Nienaber

Thomas Nienaber, M.D., Department of Pediatrics – Division of Neonatology. His project will address improving the neonatal mechanical ventilation by optimizing the endotracheal tube.
Mentor: Kevin Sexton, M.D.

Megan Reed

Megan Reed, Ph.D., Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Her project will focus on the use of comparative transcriptomics pipeline to generate and validate patient-specific treatment options for glioblastoma tumors.
Mentors: Alan Tackett, Ph.D., and Analiz Rodriguez, M.D., Ph.D.

Julia Tobacyk

Julia Tobacyk, Ph.D., Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. Her project will focus on the development of new treatments for opioid use disorder in pregnancy.
Mentor: Lisa Brents, Ph.D.

The program, which includes stipends up to $57,000 per year, is designed to help promising scientists more quickly move their discoveries into everyday practice by teaching them commercialization and team science skills.

It is supported by the NRSA Training Core (TL1) component of the UAMS Clinical and Translational Science Award, grant TL1 TR003109.

“Our program goal is to accelerate biomedical discoveries to improve health and health outcomes,” said Nancy Rusch, Ph.D., who co-directs the program for the UAMS Translational Research Institute. “I am very enthusiastic about this group of scholars. They all have exceptional talent and they are pursuing projects than can make a real difference.”

The HSIE Postdoctoral Training Program has traditionally provided support annually for eight postdoctoral fellows (four in each year of the two-year program).  However, this year the program was able to admit a clinical fellow in addition to five postdoctoral fellows. The expansion relied on postdoctoral stipends provided by the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, the Arkansas Children’s Research Institute, and the Department of Pediatrics – Division of Neonatology. The program curriculum represents a partnership between the UAMS Translational Research Institute and the Entrepreneurship Graduate Program in the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

In addition to Rusch, professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology and executive associate dean for research in the College of Medicine, the program’s leadership team includes co-director Kevin Sexton, M.D., associate professor in the Department of Surgery, and Nancy Gray, Ph.D., president of BioVentures and professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. Pamela Kahler is program manager.

The first group of HSIE Scholars named in July 2019, who will be graduating from the program this spring are: Melody Greer, Ph.D. (mentor, Fred Prior, Ph.D.), Samir Jenkins, Ph.D. (mentor, Robert Griffin, Ph.D.), Astha Malhotra, Ph.D. (mentors, Amanda Stolarz, Pharm.D., Ph.D.; and Jawahar Mehta, M.D., Ph.D.), and Aaron Storey, Ph.D. (mentor, Rick Edmondson, Ph.D.).  The second group of HSIE Scholars named in July 2020 are: Emilie Darrigues, Ph.D. (mentor, Analiz Rodriguez, M.D., Ph.D.), Shana Owens, Ph.D. (mentor, Craig Forrest, Ph.D.), John Sherrill, M.P.H., Ph.D. (mentor, David Bumpass, M.D.), and Zachary Waldrip, Ph.D. (mentor, Marie Burdine, Ph.D.)

Filed Under: Department News

May 2021 publications

Boris ZybailovMetaproteomics-An Advantageous Option in Studies of Host-Microbiota Interaction.

Karaduta O, Dvanajscak Z, Zybailov B.Microorganisms.

 

 

 

Byrum labPTMViz: a tool for analyzing and visualizing histone post translational modification data.

Chappell K, Graw S, Washam CL, Storey AJ, Bolden C, Peterson EC, Byrum SD.BMC Bioinformatics.

 

 

 

 

Members of the Kendrick LabPersistent bone marrow minimal residual disease as a “high-risk” disease feature in multiple myeloma.

Mohan M, Szabo A, Yarlagadda N, Gundarlapalli S, Thanendrarajan S, Kendrick S, Schinke C, Alapat D, Sawyer J, Tian E, Tricot G, van Rhee F, Zangari M.Am J Hematol. 

Filed Under: Department News

Congratulations to Our 2021 Graduates!

Andrea Edwards-Azumara
Dr. Andrea Edwards-Azumara

The Graduate School held a virtual hooding ceremony for the 2021 graduates on Thursday, May 13. Six students from the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department completed their doctorate this year. Dr. Dustyn Barnette was hooded by his mentor, Dr. Grover Paul Miller at Pinnacle Mountain State Park. Dr. Megan Reed was hooded by her mentor, Dr. Robert Eoff, and Dr. Andrea Edwards-Azumara was hooded by her husband. Dr. Edwards-Azumara’s mentor was Dr. Kevin Raney.

Megan Reed
Dr. Megan Reed and Dr. Robert Eoff

Also graduating from the BCMB department this year were Dr. Duah Alkam, Dr. Brian Koss, and Dr. Erin Taylor. Dr. Alkam’s mentors were Dr. Mark Smeltzer and Dr. David Ussery. Dr. Koss and Dr. Taylor were both mentored by Dr. Alan Tackett.

Filed Under: Department News

April publications

Robert EoffInhibition of tryptophan 2,3-dioxygenase impairs DNA damage tolerance and repair in glioma cells.

Reed MR, Maddukuri L, Ketkar A, Byrum SD, Zafar MK, Bostian ACL, Tackett AJ, Eoff RL.

NAR Cancer. 2021

 

 

 

 

 

Leung lab members

Image by Evan D. Lewis

New answers to the old RIDDLE: RNF168 and the DNA damage response pathway.

Kelliher J, Ghosal G, Leung JWC.

FEBS J. 2021

Filed Under: Department News

Congratulation Dr. Reed!

Congratulations to Megan Reed who successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation entitled “Mechanisms of DNA damage tolerance in glioblastoma” on April 28. Megan was a student in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Eoff and will begin a postdoctoral fellowship in July under the mentorship of Dr. Analiz Rodriguez and Dr. Alan Tackett. Dr. Reed’s postdoctoral studies will be funded by Health Sciences Innovation and Entrepreneurship TL1 program from the Translational Research Institute.

Filed Under: Department News

UAMS Cancer Researcher Receives $1.1 Million as Part of NIH Grant at University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

By David Robinson

A National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant will allow UAMS researcher Isabelle Racine Miousse, Ph.D., to ramp up her study of a nutrient that may have a role in the effectiveness of immunotherapy for cancer patients.

Miousse will receive $220,000 per year for up to five years as one of four project leaders at the Arkansas Integrative Metabolic Research Center, a new NIH-funded Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. The university announced April 6 that the center will receive $10.8 million over five years.

The funding will support Miousse’s preclinical cancer studies involving methionine, an amino acid important for human growth and derived primarily from consuming meat.

Miousse, an assistant professor in the UAMS College of Medicine Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, will test whether reducing dietary methionine can improve results of immunotherapy drugs used to treat melanoma patients.

“This has never been tried in combination with immunotherapy drugs,” Miousse said, noting that immunotherapy alone works remarkably well, but only for 50% of melanoma patients. “So far the results of this research are very encouraging, and I am hopeful that this next phase of study will take us into clinical trials.”

Unlike most cancer treatments, she notes, this one has beneficial side effects.

“Reducing methionine in the diet promotes the metabolism of fats and sugars in animal models,” Miousse said. “Methionine restriction could fight cancer and improve general health at the same time.”

Miousse’s work has been supported by the UAMS Translational Research Institute’s two-year KL2 Mentored Research Career Development Award for promising early career researchers. The KL2 provides salary support, research seed funding of $50,000 and translational research training. The institute is supported by a Clinical and Translational Science Award from the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

Filed Under: Department News

Alan Tackett Named Arkansas Research Alliance Fellow

By Susan Van Dusen

The Arkansas Research Alliance (ARA) announced today that two researchers at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences will be joining their ranks.

Edward T.H. Yeh, M.D., a cardiologist renowned in the field of onco-cardiology, was named an ARA Scholar, and Alan Tackett, Ph.D., a cancer researcher widely recognized for his work in cancer biomarker discovery, was honored as an ARA Fellow.

Yeh will receive $500,000 and Tackett will receive $75,000 to further their research.

“We are extremely proud to have both a new ARA Scholar and ARA Fellow at UAMS. The leadership demonstrated by Dr. Yeh and Dr. Tackett has made a valuable impact on research programs at UAMS. We are fortunate to have them in Arkansas and look forward to their future successes,” said Cam Patterson, M.D., MBA, UAMS Chancellor and UAMS Health CEO.

The ARA Scholars program helps recruit and support world-class researchers to universities where their work helps strengthen the competitiveness of the state.

The ARA Fellows program recognizes research leaders who are currently working in Arkansas at one of the state’s five research campuses.

“The ARA Scholars program is the cornerstone for our organization and bridges the gap between university research and economic development, while our Fellows program recognizes research leaders who have already made an impact in our state,” said Jerry Adams, ARA president. “We anticipate great things from both Dr. Yeh and Dr. Tackett as they build upon their outstanding research portfolios and explore new paths in the future.”

Yeh joined UAMS in 2020 as chair of the Department of Internal Medicine and the Nolan Family Distinguished Chair in Internal Medicine in the College of Medicine.

From 2000 to 2016, he served as professor and founding chair of the Department of Cardiology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, where he made seminal contributions to understanding the relationships between cancer, chemotherapy agents and heart disease. In 2012, his laboratory discovered that Topoisomerase 2b is the molecular basis of anthracycline-induced cardiotoxicity, upending decades of belief that toxicity to this chemotherapy drug was due solely to reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation.

Earlier, Yeh made important contributions in biochemistry, including the discovery of two ubiquitin-like proteins, SUMO/Sentrin and NEDD8. Both of these proteins are important in regulation of hypoxia-inducible factor stability, DNA repair, heart and lymphoid development, cancer pathogenesis, and sudden death and seizure disorders.

Tackett’s research involves using advanced technology to discover molecular pathways essential for the development of new therapies and finding new biological markers to assist in developing a personalized treatment for each patient’s specific needs.

He is deputy director of the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, professor in the UAMS College of Medicine Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and holder of the Scharlau Family Endowed Chair in Cancer Research.

In 2020, Tackett was awarded a $10.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) establishing the IDeA National Resource for Quantitative Proteomics as the first NIH National Resource in Arkansas, which serves biomedical researchers across the nation.

Filed Under: Department News

Binyam Belachew student highlight

Binyam is a GPIBS Ph.D. student in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology track. He is a 5th-year student in the laboratory of Dr. Kevin Raney. He graduated from Wingate University with a Bachelor of Science in Biology.

Research Interest Statement

Hepatitis C is an infectious disease caused by Hepatitis C virus (HCV). Currently, 71 million people in the world are chronically infected with the virus and around 400, 000 people die each year of complications related to the infection. HCV, like Coronavirus, is an RNA virus. The RNA genome of HCV encodes for 10 different viral proteins, one of which is NS3 (non-structural protein 3). NS3 has both a protease and a helicase domain. The helicase domain of NS3 is essential for viral replication, however, its mechanism of action is not well understood. The HCV genome has conserved G-quadruplex (G4) forming sequences. G4 is formed when tandem repeats of Guanine resides interact with each other through Hoogsteen hydrogen bonding. Helicases of the same family as NS3 are reported to unfold G4RNA structures. Therefore, it is possible that NS3 could facilitate HCV replication by unfolding G4 secondary structures found within the HCV genome, and these secondary structures could stall the replication process if it remain folded. My project focuses on understanding the mechanism by which HCV-NS3 interacts with and unfolds HCV-G4RNA. By studying how NS3 regulates HCV-G4RNA, we might find processes or factors that could serve as targets for anti-HCV agents to suppress the replication of various strains of HCV.

Something Notable about Time as a Graduate Student

Over the last four years I have been in Raney’s lab, I have been fortunate to attend several domestic and international academic conferences where I presented my work and learned from the works of others. By going to conferences, I was able to meet professionals and expand my network.

Career Goals

I would like to pursue a career in research and teaching.

Experiment or Technique You Would Most Like to Do

Computational modeling

Fun fact

I like running, hiking, and biking.

Publications

Lakkaniga, N. R., N. Gunaganti, L. Zhang, B. Belachew, B. Frett, Y. K. Leung, and H. Y. Li. 2020. Pyrrolo[2,3-d]pyrimidine derivatives as inhibitors of RET: Design, synthesis and biological evaluation. Eur.J.Med.Chem. 206:112691.

Lakkaniga, N. R., L. Zhang, B. Belachew, N. Gunaganti, B. Frett, and H. Y. Li. 2020. Discovery of SP-96, the first non-ATP-competitive Aurora Kinase B inhibitor, for reduced myelosuppression. Eur.J.Med.Chem. 203:112589. doi:S0223-5234(20)30561-4 [pii];10.1016/j.ejmech.2020.112589 [doi].

Filed Under: Student Highlights

Dr. Leung presenting for Research Antipasto

Research and Innovation is hosting the next Research Antipasto monthly event (informal online networking, casual mentoring, happy hour-ish get-together) at noon on April  6, 2021. Justin Leung, Ph.D., M.Sc. will host. Justin is an assistant professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology with a secondary appointment in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Justin recently received his 3rd NIH R01. Justin’s research interests include chromatin biology, epigenetics, DNA damage, and more.

On the first Tuesday of each month, Research Antipasto’s host will share career experiences, stories, answer questions, advise, astound, and amaze…for 30 to 60 minutes (or until we all have to catch another meeting). Just log in, have fun, and get to know others in the research community! Hosts are posted on the research calendar.

Filed Under: Department News

UAMS’ Justin Leung, Ph.D., Receives $1.47 million Grant from National Cancer Institute to Study DNA Damage Regulation

By Linda Haymes

A five-year, $1.47 million National Cancer Institute grant has been awarded to researcher Justin Leung, Ph.D., at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) to study DNA.

Leung’s project is a collaboration with Robert Eoff, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the UAMS College of Medicine. Both Leung and Eoff are researchers in the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute.

“Our work will potentially provide a fundamental understanding of the molecular mechanism of DNA damage regulation in our body and also reveal potential targets for cancer therapeutic development,” said Leung, an assistant professor in the UAMS College of Medicine Department of Radiation Oncology.

Work on the NCI grant, “Mechanistic Characterization of Cell Cycle-Dependent DNA Repair,” focuses on dissecting the molecular mechanism on cell cycle-regulated DNA repair, specifically during early DNA replication. Leung and Eoff hope to identify a key group of proteins known as a histone-mark reader that work together to protect our genetic material from DNA damage.

The NCI grant comes on the heels of Leung receiving a four-year, $792,000 American Cancer Society Research Scholar grant to study DNA repair mechanisms. He will use that grant to investigate how signaling molecules on chromatin interact with proteins that repair broken DNA during replication.

In September 2020, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences awarded Leung a $1.9 million grant in support of the researcher’s roadmap project, “Deciphering the Chromatin-based DNA Damage Response Pathway.”

Filed Under: Department News

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