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Collaborative Research Projects at UT Earn Awards

The University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine and the UT Knoxville campus created an opportunity for investigators to conduct collaborative research through funding pooled together by both UT campuses named "Pot of Gold." The pot totaled $15,000 and was awarded to two research projects.

Jonathan Wall, PhD, UTGSM Department of Medicine and Michael Best, PhD, UT Knoxville Department of Chemistry, are collaborating on research known as "Cancer Targeting Peptide." The goals of their project are to synthesize and characterize liposome NPs coated with cancer targeting peptides and to determine the biodistribution of radiolabeled NPs in mice with pulmonary melanoma metastases and subcutaneous HCC xenografts, by using small animal SPECT/CT imaging, autoradiography, and measurement of tissue-associated radioactivity. Their project was awarded $10,000.

Michael Karlstad, PhD, UTGSM Department of Surgery; Tim Sparer, PhD, UT Knoxville Department of Microbiology; and Jason Collier, PhD, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, were awarded $5,000 for their project "Role of Neutriphil CXCR2 Activation in Diabetes Development." The overall goals of this study are to understand the mechanism of CXCR2 activation that promotes neutrophil inflammatory responses and whether blocking CXCR2 signaling in vivo using a pre-clinical rodent model of diabetes will prevent Type 1 diabetes mellitus.

Posted August 7, 2014