Biomedical Engineering Faculty Receive Significant Grants
In the current world of dried up money pots and hard to receive grants, two of the biomedical engineering department’s newest faculty members have received several grants.
Dr. Nanyin Zhang, associate professor of biomedical engineering, came to our department July 2013. He received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant for $1.8 million for his proposed title “Longitudinal assessment of trauma on neural circuitry development into adulthood.“ The major goals of this application are to: 1) systematically characterize the impact of early trauma exposure on the developmental trajectories of critical neural circuits; and 2) understand the neural substrate underlying the individual vulnerability to stress-related disorders by utilizing resting-state functional connectivity.
In addition, he won a second NIH grant of approximately $1.5 million for “Resting-state Neural Networks in Awake Rodents.” This project is to construct and evaluate the rate brain connectome based on resting-state functional connectivity.
Lastly, he received a H. Lundbeck Medical Grant of $168,000 for “Evaluation of Proprietary Drug on Resting-state Functional Connectivity.” The primary purpose of this study is to test whether the newly developed antidepressant compound, vortioxetine has any acute effects on resting-state functional connectivity in rats at the awake condition and comparing the effects to the antidepressant, duloxetine.
Dr. Jian Yang, associate professor of biomedical engineering, and Dr. Jer-Tsong Hsieh, distinguished chair in prostate cancer research at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, were awarded a five-year, $1.58 million NIH/National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) grant for “Developing targeted therapy with prostate cancer specific nanomedicine.” The study uses nanotechnology for diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer. Their research will focus on finding alternatives to chemotherapy by developing a prostate cancer targeting genotoxin delivery system for the treatment of prostate cancer. Their hope is to find a way to target and deliver drugs to the cancer without the awful side effects of the traditional chemotherapy.
Yang was successful in receiving another NIH-NHLBI multi-principal investigator grant for $1.4 million along with Dr. Kytai Nguyen, associate professor of bioengineering from the University of Texas, Arlington. The grant, entitled “Novel engineered particle platform for endothelium regeneration,” seeks to develop platelet-mimicking endothelial progenitor cell-capturing nanoparticle scaffolds for in situ endothelium regeneration, a potentially promising way to treat vascular injury.
Cardiovascular interventions such as angioplasty and stenting are commonly employed to open a blockage of the narrowed blood vessel. These procedures often damage the arterial wall, leading to the development of late pathological conditions such as thrombosis, inflammation, and restenosis (re-narrowing of an artery). The research project strives to develop novel, multifunctional nanoparticle systems that perform several functions such as reducing platelet accumulation onto the injured arterial wall, capturing endothelial progenitor cells in the circulation to this site, and promoting the maturation of these cells into endothelial cells for vascular endothelium regeneration, leading to the natural healing of vascular injury after interventions.
There is hope that the trend will continue and many more biomedical engineers within our department will receive grants to further their important research.
-Carol Boring, Undergraduate/Graduate Staff Assistant
Mohammad Reza Abidian, professor of biomedical engineering, has received a $1.8 million single-PI grant from the National Institutes of Health's Institute for Neurological Disorders (NINDS).
The five-year grant is titled, "Neural Tissue Engineering Based on Combinatorial Effects of Multiple Guidance Cues."
"The aim of this project is to provide an understanding of effect of gradients of guidance cues on guidance and modulation of axonal growth," said Abidian, the grant's principal investigator.
Sheereen Majd, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, is serving as a co-investigator on the effort.
Abidian explained that the nervous system is composed of neurons, which process and transmit information throughout the body. The actual transmission of information takes place through axon, or a nerve fiber that conducts the electrical impulse away from the neuron cell.
He added that one of biggest mysteries for researchers in this field is how axons are able to reach their targets in such a precise manner.
The biomedical engineers said that research on the guidance cues could reveal how axons navigate through their complex natural environment. That, in turn, could be the initial step in finding a solution to the major clinical problem of neural regeneration in central and peripheral nervous systems.
Sheereen Majd, assistant professor of bioengineering, received a $150,000 New Investigator Research grant for "Functional Studies of Multi-drug Resistance Transporters at Single-Protein Level."
The new program is funded by a gift from the late Charles Kaufman, who left his $50 million estate to the Pittsburgh Foundation, of which $40 million was assigned to the Kaufman Foundation to support new research initiatives at Pennsylvania institutions of higher learning in chemistry, biology and physics "for achievement in and contribution to the field and humanity."
This grant supports a project to unveil questions behind the transport mechanisms of the multi-drug resistant (MDR) transporters at a single molecule level. The MDR transporters are the membrane proteins that actively transport foreign molecules from inside to outside of the cells. These transporters are a major obstacle in cancer drug development because they pump the toxic drugs outside of the cancer cells, minimizing their effect. With this grant, Dr. Majd aims to employ an artificial membrane system to study MDR transporters.
- Article edited from originals by Curtis Chan