Tags: Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies

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Battling neglected diseases

Great overview of the work by Franklin College faculty in the Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases, where multi-track efforts are yielding gains against some of the world's worst scourges: Founded 20 years ago by Regents Professor of Cellular Biology Rick Tarleton, CTEGD consolidates UGA’s extensive, campus-wide tropical disease knowledge and drug discovery expertise into an interdisciplinary research unit that focuses on…

man in lab with bottles
NIH awards UGA researchers $2.6 million to fight African sleeping sickness

The National Institutes of Health has awarded $2.6 million to University of Georgia researchers to develop new drugs to treat human African Trypanosomiasis, also known as African sleeping sickness: African Trypanosomiasis, commonly known as HAT, is caused by a single-celled parasite called Trypanosoma brucei, which is transmitted to humans through the bite of a blood-sucking insect called a tsetse fly. Following a bite, the parasite multiplies…

man and woman in lab
Progress against infectious diseases continues

Scientists' fight against cryptosporidiosis recently reached a major milestone: Infectious disease scientists from research institutions including the University of Georgia have reported the discovery and early validation of a drug that shows promise for treating cryptosporidiosis, a diarrheal disease that is a major cause of child mortality and for which there is no vaccine or effective treatment. "Cryptosporidiosis is largely a disease of…


Researchers publish breakthrough in reversing leukemia

Today in the journal Nature, a UGA research team led by Takahiro Ito published important new work that identifies a new drug target for the two most common types of myeloid leukemia, including a way to turn back the most aggressive form of the disease: By blocking a protein called BCAT1, the researchers were able to stop cancer cell growth in mice and human blood samples from leukemia patients. The BCAT1 protein activates the metabolism of a…

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Center for Molecular Medicine

The center, which broke ground December 2015, will be adjacent to the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center on Riverbend Road. The proximity between the two centers is aimed to encourage cross-disciplinary interaction between investigators—often a recipe for research success. The center will also be a training ground for graduate and undergraduate students to become the next generation of biomedical scientists. Years in the making, this new…

man in lab color photo
$2.78 million from NIH to study CRISPR-Cas

One of the most promising technologies in at least a generation, CRISPR-Cas is a powerful gene editing tool derived from a defense mechanism evolved in bacteria and other single-celled organisms. Progress on the tool at UGA will continue thanks to a new grant from the National Institutes of Health: CRISPR-Cas allows scientists to precisely edit sequences of DNA in everything from plants to humans, and it could one day be used to…

man on left, with mitosis color diagram
New insights on regulation of mitosis could improve chemotherapy treatments

An important new study from cellular biology researchers describes a drug combination that enhances chemotherapy's cancer-killing powers: Chemotherapy's ultimate goal is to destroy a person's cancer, but one common type of the treatment known as antimicrotubule chemotherapy has the tendency to let cancer cells slip through at the exact time that it's supposed to kill them-during the cell division phase known as mitosis. These dividing cells…

man in lab with beakers, bottles
New drug discovery targets African sleeping sickness

Human African trypanosomiasis, long known as sleeping sickness, is a vector-borne parasitic disease endemic to rural sub-Saharan Africa. A research team led by Kojo Mensa-Wilmot of cellular biology reports significant progress combating the disease in a newly published study: "There is a significant challenge in terms of trying to find new drugs to control the disease," said Kojo Mensa-Wilmot, professor and head of the department of cellular…

people in lab
Editing genome sequences to correct mutations

Extraordinary new research on how the bacterial immune system provides a way forward on correcting genetic mutations:  [UGA] researchers Michael and Rebecca Terns were among the first to begin to study the bacterial immune system. They now have identified a key link in how bacteria respond and adapt to foreign invaders. The new study, authored by the Terns and postdoctoral research associate Yunzhou Wei in the Franklin College of Arts and…


Study deepens the connection between hypoxia and cancer growth

There are a number of species that have a low to negligible probability of developing cancer. These include squirrels, turtles, the mole rat and certain whales. The reasons why are linked to these species' ability to adapt their oxygen demand when faced with a low oxygen supply. That connection itself goes back to a discover by the great physiologist and Nobel laureate Otto Warburg, who hypothesized in 1924 that, whatever the secondary causes of…

Dhar in her lab
New drug formulation for cancer treatment

Great new research from the department of chemistry: The drug dichloroacetate, or DCA, was touted as a cure-all, but after years of work, scientists are still searching for ways to make the unique treatment as effective as possible. Now, researchers at the University of Georgia have discovered a new way to deliver this drug that may one day make it a viable treatment for numerous forms of cancer. They published their findings in the American…


UGA chemistry researchers develop new treatment for chemotherapy side effects

A prodrug is medication introducded into the body in an inactive (or less than fully active) form, that then becomes converted to its active form through the normal metabolic processes of the body, as a sort of precursor to the intended drug. Researchers in the department of chemistry announced the development of a new aspirin-based prodrug that may prevent damage caused by chemotherapy: [The new treament] promises to reduce many of the…


Stem cell research focuses on cell cycle

Interesting new work on stem cells sheds light on mysteries about cell differentiation: Amar Singh, postdoctoral associate in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar of Molecular Cell Biology Stephen Dalton worked together to uncover the mystery about why stem cell populations are thought to be heterogeneous, or made up of a variety of different cells. They discovered the heterogeneity, or…


New Imaging capabilities reported in study from cell biologists

Polycystic kidney disease is one of the most common life-threatening genetic diseases, affecting an estimated 12.5 million people worldwide, and but one of multiple conditions researchers have connected to defective cilia. UGA researchers recenty published a study describing how cilia are constructed, findings based on new protein-level observations: Led by Karl Lechtreck, assistant professor in the department of cellular biology, a team of…


When Health and Culture Collide

MEDLIFE meeting features speaker, service opportunities By JESSICA LUTON jluton@uga.edu A meeting tonight offers students a closer look at research and service at UGA. At 7:30 p.m., at the Zell B. Miller Learning Center in room 214, a meeting for the UGA chapter of the student organization MEDLIFE will feature a lecture from UGA Anthropology professor Susan Tanner. The event is of interest to any student interested in the ways in which culture…


$10m NIH grant to Center for Biomedical Glycomics

Glycobiology is very complex science - the study the structures, biosynthesis and biology of the sugar chains, or glycans, that are essential components in all living things. Glycans have been the focus of much attention by UGA researchers recently, and now glycobiology is at the center of big new NIH grant to another team of Franklin College researchers: Researchers at the University of Georgia have received a five-year, $10.4 million grant…


Re-programming immune cells with nanoparticles

Researchers from the department of chemistry, in the early online edition of ACS Nano, report progress on an innovative new use for nanoparticles: The human body operates under a constant state of martial law. Chief among the enforcers charged with maintaining order is the immune system, a complex network that seeks out and destroys the hordes of invading bacteria and viruses that threaten the organic society as it goes about its work. The…

Boons in the lab
Researchers publish new method for glycan synthesis

Researchers at the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center announced a new methodology with broad implications for human health. A research team led by Geert-Jan Boons, Franklin Professor in the department of chemistry, recently published on the first method for synthesizing asymmetrical N-glycans: According to the study, published in the journal Science on July 25, the approach could lead to a better understanding of how viruses and bacteria enter…


Starai awarded $1.5m to study Legionnaires' disease

Originally named from an outbreak at an American Legion convention in 1976, Legionellosis or Legionaires' disease is a severe type of pneumonia that affects only a small percentage of the population but can be fatal. UGA researcher Vincent Starai was recently awarded $1,503,565 by the National Institutes of Health to investigate how the bacterium that causes Legionellosis overcome the body’s defenses. Starai is an assistant professor who…


Collaborative research proposals bring together UGA and CDC

Two of the three research proposals selected for funding by the Centers for Disease Control in a recent competition are from Franklin College faculty: Funded by the UGA Research Foundation and the CDC, the awards provide pilot research project funding to promote collaboration in scientific innovation and technology development at the interface of human, veterinary and ecological health, increase quality and output of research, and…


Discovery about little-studied protein holds promise for drug treatments

More evidence that the front lines of research on life-threatening diseases are right here on the UGA campus and in the Franklin College. Insightful new work from a research group lead by faculty member Natarajan Kannan of the Institute for Bioinformatics and the department of biochemistry and molecular biology: Enter protein kinases. Like specialized traffic signals, this huge class of proteins is critical for many aspects of cell communication…

two people in a lab
Researchers find ancient mechanisms propel modern parasites

Finding cures and new treatments for diseases seems to be a unique eschelon of highly-informed scientific detective work, as this new finding published by Franklin College researchers demonstrates: Long ago, when life on Earth was in its infancy, a group of small single-celled algae propelled themselves through the vast prehistoric ocean by beating whip like tails called flagella. It's a relatively unremarkable tale, except that now, more than…

rick tarleton in his lab
New diagnostic test for Chagas disease

Chagas disease is a tropical parasitic disease commonly transmitted to humans and other mammals by an insect vector, but it can also be spread through blood transfusions and food contaminated with parasites. It's a horrible scourge that, though eminently treatable, is believed to infect more than 8 million people in Mexico, Central America and South America, most of whom do not know they are infected. But now, researchers in UGA's Center for…


Nanoscale researchers develop rapid diagnostic tests

In a series of studies, UGA researchers have developed a single-step method that can detect viruses, bacteria and chemical contaminants: "The results are unambiguous and quickly give you a high degree of specificity," said senior author Yiping Zhao, professor of physics in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and director of the university's Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center. Zhao and his co-authors—doctoral students Jing Chen…
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