An electrospray ionization time-of-flight ion mobility hybrid mass spectrometer for drug discovery

Michael Griffith Bartlett

Michael Bartlett, professor and graduate coordinator, department of pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences in the College of Pharmacy, was awarded $500,000 by the National Center for Research Resources at the National Institutes of Health to support the acquisition of a mass spectrometer. NCRR provides clinical and translational researchers with the training and tools they need to transform basic discoveries into improved human health.

The instrument will be used by various NIH-funded researchers at the University of Georgia who are investigating areas important to drug discovery, including synthetic medicinal chemistry of anti-virals and anti-bacterials, cancer biology, and neurological disorders.

"We are very excited to be able to bring this new technology to The University of Georgia,” Bartlett  said.  This instrument is a fundamentally new type of mass spectrometer that integrates mass spectrometry with ion mobility spectrometry to allow for improved study of very complex biological samples."

Curator of Decorative Arts

William U. Eiland

The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded a $50,000 stimulus grant to the Georgia Museum of Art, which provides a year of salary and benefits to fill the vacant position of curator of decorative arts. Recognizing the importance of the nonprofit arts industry on the economy, the Recovery Act provides stimulus funds to preserve jobs in the nonprofit arts sector that are threatened by the current economic downturn.

The curator of decorative arts directs the museum’s Henry D. Green Center for the Study of the Decorative Arts, which has as its primary focus the decorative arts and material culture of Georgia. Founded in 1998, the Green Center produces exhibitions, publications and educational programs that reach audiences in Georgia and well beyond the region, thus serving a critical role in the museum’s mission and its long-range and strategic goals.

“Happily, this very timely grant allows us to continue the work of the Henry D. Green Center without missing a beat,” said the museum’s director, William U. Eiland.

Diesel fleet retrofit to reduce particulate emissions in Athens-Clarke County, GA and Washington County, GA

Dan Geller

Ryan Adolphson

The Environmental Protection Agency has awarded $1,713,235 to a team from UGA’s Engineering Outreach Service and officials from Athens-Clarke County and Washington County.

The money will be used to retrofit more than 250 diesel vehicles to reduce harmful air pollutants by more than 60 percent and will directly assist in creating at least 28 jobs at UGA, Athens-Clarke and Washington counties, and elsewhere.

“This funding will have an immediate effect on people in the area,” said Ryan Adolphson, director of the Faculty of Engineering Outreach Service. “We will be providing jobs in a tough economic climate and at the same time substantially improving the air we all breathe.”

The project will focus on cleaning up emissions from diesel vehicles including Athens-Clarke and UGA transit vehicles, garbage trucks and heavy diesel vehicles, Athens-Clarke fire engines and Washington County public and private school buses.

The implementation also will have a very positive impact on air quality in Georgia.

The average lifetime diesel soot cancer risk for a resident of Athens-Clarke County is 1 in 3,876, according to the Clean Air Task Force. This risk is 258 times greater than EPA’s acceptable cancer level of 1 in one million. For a Washington County resident, the average lifetime diesel soot cancer risk is 1 in 8,638. This risk is 116 times greater than EPA’s acceptable cancer level.

Long-term exposure to fine particulate matter is associated with chronic bronchitis, reduced lung function and increased mortality from lung cancer and heart disease.

Effect of helminth infection on HIV-1 vaccines

Donald Harn

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, will award $743,042 over a two-year period to Donald Harn, immunologist in the Department of Infectious Diseases, College of Veterinary Medicine, to investigate how infection with helminth parasites impacts response to HIV-I vaccines. Dr. Harn is a Regents Professor, Georgia Research Alliance Distinguished Investigator, and a member of the UGA Faculty of Infectious Diseases.

The worldwide AIDS epidemic is most devastating in developing countries where more than 40 million people are infected. Development of an HIV-1 vaccine for populations in southern Africa and other developing countries is the highest priority. However, Harn said, in addition to the risk of HIV-1, the majority of inhabitants in developing countries are also infected with helminth parasites, worm-like parasites that live and feed off the inside of living hosts, and helminth infection suppresses human immune responses to the candidate vaccines in development or in clinical trials.

Thus, investigation of how helminth infection impacts immune response to candidate HIV-1 vaccines is an important question to investigate prior to testing of candidate vaccines in helminth-infected populations. The proposed experiments will examine HIV-1 vaccine responses in mice uninfected and infected with schistosomiasis, a helminth-caused disease that affects some 200 million people worldwide to determine if eradication of schistosome infection allows their immune systems to mount strong responses following vaccination with HIV-1 candidate vaccines; if reinfection with schistosome alters HIV-1 vaccine response; and the response to different types of vaccine vectors, or carriers.

Macroscopic electronic and electrochemical properties of networks of purified SWNTS

Marcus Lay

Marcus Lay, assistant professor of chemistry, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, was awarded $564,036 from the National Science Foundation. Lay is also a member of the NanoScale Science and Engineering Center (NanoSec), which fosters new, multidisciplinary collaborative nanotechnology research and educational programs at UGA.  

This project involves the use new purification and deposition methods for the formation of highly pure 2-dimensional carbon nanotube networks.  Electrochemistry will be used to modify this unique electronic material for the purpose of making enhanced electronic and photovoltaic materials for applications involving transparent, flexible and lightweight electronic materials. 

Lay said, “This work is expected to greatly contribute to creation of materials for renewable energy.”

G-SELC: A New Global Optimization Technique Using Genetic Algorithms, Tabu Search and Gaussian Processes

Abhyuday Mandal

The National Science Foundation has awarded Abhyuday Mandal, Department of Statistics, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, a $100,000 grant for development of a new computational approach that will optimize drug discovery, as well as other areas of modeling.

Identifying promising compounds from a vast collection of feasible compounds is an important and yet challenging problem in the pharmaceutical industry. The proposed research helps reduce the expenditure at the early stages of drug discovery, thus creating significant economic and social benefits. This optimization technique is also used to identify optimal solutions in many other scientific research problems such as computer experiments, functional magnetic resonance imaging and nanotechnology. In some applications, categorical variables can be treated as continuous. This simplifies the computation in Gaussian process modeling significantly. It has far-reaching consequences not only in drug discovery, but also in complex computer modeling where Gaussian process modeling is used extensively, which includes modeling air quality, calibration of computational models of cerebral blood flow, predicting climate and weather, statistical mechanics of granular flow, terrestrial models, and dynamics of infectious diseases.

MRS/MRI for small animal models of disease

James Prestegard

The NIH National Center for Research Resources has awarded $500,000 to a group of University of Georgia scientists led by James Prestegard, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, and chemistry, and GRA/Varian Eminent Scholar of NMR Spectroscopy, for the purchase of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) system. The new system ultimately will benefit our ability to combat and understand human diseases, including cancer, diabetes, obesity, circulatory disease, neurodegenerative disease, and pathogenic infection by allowing scientists to non-invasively study diseases in small animals (primarily mice and rats).

The new MRI/MRS system, which will be located in the Bioimaging Research Center (BIRC) at UGA's Coverdell Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences, will be used by an interdisciplinary group of 20 scientists that represents three colleges and nine different departments at UGA, and include five of UGA’S Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholars, as well as faculty at the Medical College of Georgia.

The system will be based on a 7 Tesla, 210 mm horizontal bore magnet (MRI) that uses radiofrequency waves and a strong magnetic field to provide clear and detailed images of internal anatomy. The MRS component of the system allows scientists a non-invasive way to study the metabolism and biochemistry of tissues.

The scientists' research, much of it already funded by the NIH, requires accurate monitoring of anatomical and physiological changes in animals during the course of a study. Traditionally, this is done by microscopic examination of tissues from animals sacrificed at various times during a study. However, sacrifice introduces the effects of population variations, degrading the quality of data over time, and requiring observations on multiple animals to restore statistical validity. The MRI/MRS system will provide a versatile alternative that allows in vivo imaging of anatomical features and the non-invasive monitoring of metabolite levels on single animals over time.

Regarding the new capabilities that the MRI/MRS system will bring to UGA, Prestegard said, “The imaging capabilities of MRI are well established and will be of immediate use to a large number of ongoing research projects. However, the ability to associate changes in metabolism with different regions of an image is relatively new and offers a new dimension for diagnosis and study of disease. The instrumentation should therefore also provide exciting new opportunities for research as well.”

DNA recombinational repair in Helicobacter pylori

Wang He

Wang He, associate research scientist in microbiology, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded $185,417 by the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for studies of a bacterium that infects the stomachs of one-half of human populations and causes ulcers and gastric cancer. This project will examine DNA recombinational repair in H. pylori, specifically focusing on defining commonly accepted repair proteins and identifying additional components of the repair system. The studies will bring new insight into a novel process that is important for the viability of H. pylori in the gut and which is not found in model organisms. This work will help us understand how H. pylori can adapt to and persist in the human stomach, leading to therapeutic advances for curing gastric diseases.

Supplemental Vitamin D and functional outcomes in early adolescence

Richard Lewis

Richard Lewis, department of foods and nutrition, College of Family and Consumer Sciences, has received a $2.2 million, two-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to explore the role vitamin D plays in children's health and the appropriate dose children need in order to maintain healthy levels of vitamin D in their bloodstream. A report in the August 3, 2009 journal Pediatrics showed 60 percent of children and adolescents had insufficient levels of vitamin D. UGA researchers have found that even in Georgia, a significant number of children and adolescents, particularly African-Americans, have low levels of vitamin D and that levels drop as they grow older.

The sun has always been considered a primary source of vitamin D because it causes the vitamin to be synthesized in the skin. However, for those with darker skin, those living in areas where the sun doesn't shine as frequently, and those who either wear sunblock or don't get out in the sun for other reasons, supplements have long been considered important in ensuring indivieuals have enough vitamin D.

During the two-year study, researchers will look at several biochemical measures of bone health, including calcium absorption, to determine the appropriate dose of vitamin D supplements children need to ensure they grow up with strong, healthy bones. Because research has shown that African-American children tend to have lower levels of vitamin D than white children, one goal of the study is to determine if the two racial groups respond differently to oral supplements of vitamin D.

Mechanism controlling thymic, homeostatis, involution and rebound

Nancy Manley

Nancy Manley, department of genetics, Franklin College of Arts & Sciences, received a $2 million, two-year grant from NIH for studies on the thymus, the organ in humans that produces disease-fighting T-cells. Last year, Manley's lab, using the mouse as a biological model, provided the first evidence that a key gene must be crucial to maintaining the production of the thymus and its disease-fighting T-cells after an animal's birth. The discovery could help scientists find out how to turn the thymus back on so it could produce T-cells long after it normally shuts down most of its function, which, for humans, occurs by early adulthood. If the finding leads to further ways to manipulate the gene, the result could be a new avenue for the body to fight disease more effectively as it ages.

The research will try to discover the actual mechnisms by which the thymus shuts down and how these changes affect immune system function during aging. If and when that mechanism is found, scientists may find a way to turn the organ's function back on permanently or at specific times in the life of a human or an animal to fight disease or aging. an ultimate payoff might be longer and healthier lives for people. "You don't have to think far to see how understanding the effect of this gene could affect the quality of life for older people and others as well," said Manley.

Cocaine-induced metaplasticity in the hippocampus

John Wagner

The National Institutes of Health has awarded $185,625 to John Wagner, physiology and pharmacology, College of Veterinary Medicine, to characterize the actions of cocaine abuse on neural function. Wagner's long-range goal is to learn whether chronic cocaine exposure causes permanent changes in the brain that perpetuate cravings, even after rehabilitation. These cravings may contribute to relapse in a high percentage of addicts despite withdrawal, therapy and a sincere desire to be free of the drug's effects.

Wagner said that while scientists are beginning to unravel the "craving circuitry" of the brain, many questions remain. For example, what is the specific effect of cocaine abuse on the hippocampus, a region of the brain involved in the formation of memories and learning?

"Understanding how the memories related to drug exosure may contribute to uncontrolled drug-seeking behavior is a major goal for neuro-scientists studying the disease of addiction," said Wagner. He will use electrophysiological recording techniques to monitor neural responses in the hippocampus, then evalulate and characterize the persisting effects of cocaine on synaptic funciton in the brain.

Meals on Wheels volunteers as health literacy coaches for older adults

Vicki Freimuth

Vicki Freimuth and Don Rubin, speech communication, Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, have been awarded $497,018 for a two-year project that uses volunteers to reach out to vulnerable elderly persons as a means to improve their interactions with medical providers. Two hundred Meals on Wheels (MOW) volunteers who interact daily with older adults in rural and urban Georgia will be trained as health literacy coaches. MOW volunteers are ideally suited to be health literacy coaches, since they enjoy special status as intimate, welcome, and regular visitors to the otherwise difficult to reach homebound.

Previous research affirms that MOW volunteers can conduct health promotion during brief encounters with clients. Twelve-hundred MOW clients will be randomly assigned to one of three treatments. Some clients will receive meals as usual. For others, MOW volunteers will give clients materials pertaining to "Ask-Me-3" and will show brief videos. A third group will also receive four coaching sessions over the course of a year, prior to health care encounters. The goal is to improve the elderly's health literacy skills, resulting in more effective interactions with medical providers.

If successful, says Friemuth, the intervention can be implemented nationally, potentially reaching over 3 million vulnerable older adults.

Understanding mechanisms of HESC self-renewal and cell-fate commitment

Stephen Dalton

Stephen Dalton, University of Georgia professor and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar of Molecular Biology, has received a $600,000 federal stimulus grant to accelerate research into a type of stem cell that can turn into virtually any cell type.

Scientists recently discovered that induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) can be reprogrammed from skin or other easily obtained adult cells. They appear to be similar to stem cells derived from embryos. The new type of cells potentially could be used to treat disorders ranging from spinal cord injury to heart disease to diabetes and may also allow patients’ cells to be used in their own medical treatment.

Dalton said, "Our work with iPS cells will hopefully lead to the development of cell therapies for cardiovascular disease and stroke."

The UGA grant is one of 22 one-year federal stimulus grant supplements awarded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) for iPS cell research. Dalton's research group, based in the department of biochemistry and molecular biology, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, previously had received a five-year $9.2 million award from NIGMS in 2008 as part of an initiative to uncover the basic biology of human embryonic stem cells.

While iPS cells are viewed as having tremendous potential, much remains to be learned about their fundamental properties, including how they differ from embryonic stem cells and what makes them generate different types of cells.

Collaborative research by Dr. Dalton and Dr. David Gilbert [Florida State University, also a grant recipient] on unique aspects of cell division in human embryonic stem cells have provided important insights on how these cells self-renew and commit to specific cell fates," said Marion Zatz, who oversees Dalton’s grant at NIGMS.

"The Recovery Act funds will give them the exciting opportunity to investigate these processes in recently discovered iPS cells, possibly leading to improved ways of generating stem cells for therapeutic uses," said Zatz. "The funds will also help stimulate the economy through the purchase of equipment and supplies and the hiring of three additional research scientists.

Stimulus grant brings new research projects and jobs to Savannah River Ecology Laboratory

A $2.6 million federal stimulus grant from the U.S. Department of Energy will bring new jobs to the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, the University of Georgia research facility located near Aiken, S.C.

The grant for seven new and five continuing research projects will create 12 new full-time jobs and allow approximately 16 University of Georgia research professionals and technicians to retain their full-time positions.

For over 50 years, SREL has pursued basic and applied research at levels of ecological organization ranging from atoms to ecosystems at the Savannah River Site, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) facility. SREL also provides opportunities for graduate and undergraduate research training, and service to the community through environmental outreach. SREL has played an essential role in DOE's stewardship and management of the Savannah River Site, researching all ecological aspects of site operations.

Over the past four to five years, as the research priorities of the DOE changed and funding to UGA decreased, the number of employees at SREL decreased from a peak of 200 in 2004-2005 to 50 this year -- a 75 percent decline. This new funding will allow SREL to begin to rebuild its research programs.

"Importantly, the federal funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act means SREL can hire new research professionals who will expand our capability to bring in new sources of external funding, replacing the stimulus funding once it ends," said Carl Bergmann, SREL co-director and the grant's principal investigator. "We're also pleased that SREL's former employees will be eligible for the new jobs that this grant will provide."

SREL co-director Ken McLeod said, "SREL's new research projects will further enable DOE to understand and address site impacts on all levels, while also contributing to the greater scientific community."

Most of the research projects will provide important knowledge about the behavior of environmental contaminants from human activity, especially in aquatic environments like the rivers, streams and ponds of the Savannah River Site, he explained. "This research increases our knowledge of the basic aspects of these systems, which in turn helps the development of solutions to important environmental problems."

One project is a study of long-lived reptiles, like turtles and alligators, by conservation biologist Tracey Tuberville and ecologist David Scott. The researchers will look at how these reptiles, which live 40 to 70 years and eat other vertebrates as well as invertebrates, may be the best animals to study when assessing risks associated with long-term contaminant exposure.

In another project, ecologists J. Vaun McArthur and Dean Fletcher will examine how and to what extent trace metals introduced to streams and rivers by human activity, such as coal burning power plants, put organisms at risk. Their study will look at what an organism eats and what eats the organism, to get a complete picture of the aquatic food web and provide models for what happens to those contaminants further up the food chain -- in birds and mammals.

A collaborative project between SREL biologist Larry Bryan and colleagues at Eastern Illinois University will study what happens to the environmental contaminants, including metals, radionuclides and organic solvents that have been released to a stream and pond system on the DOE's Savannah River Site. What the scientists learn about bioaccumulation of contaminants will inform models used in assessment of the risk these contaminants pose to those at the top of the food chain, including humans.

Weatherization Monitoring/Education Program

A $1.3 million stimulus grant to University of Georgia College of Family and Consumer Sciences will help Georgians reduce their energy bills and carbon footprint, and create jobs in Georgia.

Jorge H. Atiles, extension professor of housing and associate dean in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, was awarded the grant from the Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority, the state entity managing the federal stimulus funds from the U.S. Department of Energy for the Georgia Low-Income Weatherization Assistance Program.

Weatherization assistance is provided directly by Community Action agencies and similar energy assistance agencies in the state to reduce infiltration in homes and improve energy performance in homes of limited–income households. The $1.3 million grant will fund the first seven months of a UGA Cooperative Extension program that will monitor weatherization activities and provide energy conservation education to Georgians receiving weatherization assistance throughout the state.

Atiles said this grant will create a sustainable weatherization program that aims at ensuring that after homes are weatherized, their occupants will be in the best position to realize energy savings and reduce their carbon footprint. The project will help Georgians meet the Governor's Energy Challenge to reduce energy bills by 15 percent by 2020.

The current contract is eligible for an additional two-year renewal that could exceed $4.5 million in funding for this sustainable weatherization monitoring and education program.

Through this grant, UGA Cooperative Extension will be able to save at least five jobs and fund 20 new positions reaching every Extension district in the state. We are realizing one of the many goals of the federal stimulus package: the creation and preservation of jobs, Atiles said.

UGA Cooperative Extension is a successful partnership between the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the College of Family and Consumer Sciences.

Drug discovery consortium for Chagas disease

Rick Tarleton

Chagas disease, the result of infection with the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi, has been described as one of the "most neglected of the neglected diseases," affecting up to 20 million individuals in the Americas. The focus of this proposal is the discovery and development of drugs to treat this infection.

This project supports development of a consortium of academic laboratories and pharmaceutical companies that will investigate a variety of independently identified drug targets and candidate compounds. The research will be conducted at multiple sites, relying on the specific expertise of the partners to pursue distinct leads.