All News Archives – Page 180

Diabetics could get relief from daily injections

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date December 8, 2008

Chemist Brent Sumerlin, assistant professor in the Dedman College Department of Chemistry at Southern Methodist University, is assessing the potential uses for nano-scale polymer particles. One of those could be controlled drug delivery.

In one scenario, polymers could detect high glucose levels in a diabetic’s blood stream and automatically release insulin, freeing diabetics from a daily injection schedule.

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Sumerlin’s research has earned him a $475,000 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award. NSF gives the award to junior faculty members who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars in American colleges and universities.

Sumerlin will receive the grant over five years for two related nanotechnology research projects. One of those projects has potential biomedical applications, and the other has a promising advanced materials application.

The prestigious award also includes support for education outreach. Sumerlin’s grant will fund a program for K-12 school districts and community colleges to help prepare and attract minority students for SMU chemistry internship positions.

“As a teacher, as a scientist, and through his community outreach and service, Professor Sumerlin exemplifies the finest scholarly tradition,” said Cordelia Candelaria, dean of Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences. “His work is dedicated to expanding minds through exposure to basic science, including a generous willingness to share his lessons and labs off campus with teachers and students in elementary, middle and high school classrooms. Dedman College is thrilled by NSF’s recognition of Brent’s achievements.”

Sumerlin, 32, works with an SMU team of postdoctoral research associates, graduate and undergraduate students who fuse the fields of polymer, organic and biochemistries to develop novel materials with composite properties.

“This award enhances what I do at the university level and what I can do through SMU for the rest of the community,” Sumerlin said.

The first part of Sumerlin’s NSF-funded research will investigate how nano-scale polymer particles can be triggered to come apart in response to a chemical stimulus. One of the potential applications of the technology is an automatic treatment solution for diabetics by releasing insulin from tiny polymer spheres when they encounter dangerous levels of glucose in the bloodstream.

“Researchers worldwide are looking toward methods of insulin delivery that will relieve diabetics of frequent blood-sugar monitoring and injections,” Sumerlin said.

The second aspect of the project involves making polymers with the ability to come apart and put themselves back together again – a technique that Sumerlin believes can be used to construct materials that are self-repairing.

“We could potentially think about coatings for airplane wings that are damaged by debris during flight,” Sumerlin said. “After landing, we could quickly treat the coating, causing it to re-form itself.”

Sumerlin received his doctorate from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2003, accepted a position as visiting assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University for the next two years, then joined SMU in 2005.

Tags Brent Sumerlin, Dedman College, SMU Department of Chemistry

Health & Medicine Mind & Brain

Protecting brain’s neurons could halt Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date November 30, 2008
No Comments on Protecting brain’s neurons could halt Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s

Researchers at Southern Methodist University and The University of Texas at Dallas have identified a group of chemical compounds that slows the degeneration of neurons, a condition that causes such common diseases of old age as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and amyotropic lateral sclerosis.

SMU Chemistry Professor Edward R. Biehl and UTD Biology Professor Santosh R. D’Mello teamed to test 45 chemical compounds. Four were found to be the most potent protectors of brain cells, or neurons.

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Their findings were published in the November 2008 issue of “Experimental Biology and Medicine.”

The synthesized chemicals, called “substituted indolin-2-one compounds,” are derivatives of another compound called GW5074 that was shown to prevent neurodegeneration in a past report published by the D’Mello lab.

While effective at protecting neurons from decay or death, GW5074 is toxic to cells at slightly elevated doses, which makes it unsuitable for clinical testing in patients. The newly identified, second generation compounds maintain the protective feature of GW5074 but are not toxic, even at very high doses, and hold promise in halting the steady march of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

“Sadly, neurodegenerative diseases are a challenge for our elderly population,” D’Mello said. “People are living longer and are more impacted by diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis than ever before, which means we need to aggressively look for drugs that treat diseases. But most exciting now are our efforts to stop the effects of brain disease right in its tracks. Although the newly discovered compounds have only been tested in cultured neurons and mice, they do offer hope.”

The most common cause of neurodegenerative disease is aging. Current medications only alleviate the symptoms but do not affect the underlying cause, which is degeneration of neurons. The identification of compounds that inhibit neuronal death is thus of urgent and critical importance.

The new compounds may offer doctors an option beyond just treating the symptoms of neurodegenerative diseases. The development isn’t a cure, but doctors may be able to one day use compounds that stop cell death in combination with currently existing drugs that battle the symptoms of brain diseases. The combination of stopping the disease in its tracks while treating disease symptoms can offer hope to people suffering and the families impacted by these diseases.

Tags Dedman College, Edward R. Biehl, SMU Department of Chemistry

Health & Medicine

Blocking enzyme may prove novel way to thwart HIV

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date November 21, 2008

In 1996 the introduction of “triple cocktail” drug therapy transformed AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable chronic disease. The drug regimen, also known as HAART for highly active antiretroviral treatment, involved treating patients with three or more classes of antiviral medicines.

But the virus fought back. It mutates easily, and the mutations caused resistance to first one and then another drug making up the cocktail. Unsettling reports of newly infected patients with the drug-resistant virus meant researchers needed to find new ways to fight HIV infection.

That could be what is happening in the Dedman Life Sciences Building at SMU, where a young assistant professor of biological sciences is conducting research that may lead to a novel way of combating HIV-1.

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In his office in Dedman College’s Department of Biological Sciences, Assistant Professor Robert Harrod talks about an exciting discovery his research team made last year. The discovery involves the way viruses replicate and the disease Werner syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that causes premature aging.

The HIV-1 virus infects white cells involved in fighting infection, inserting itself into the genetic material of the cells, commonly known as T-cells, to cause AIDS. Once the virus is integrated into the host cell, Harrod explains, it is dependent on “human cellular transcription factors” to replicate. The researchers have shown that the Werner syndrome enzyme is an essential factor in that transcription process. They reasoned if they could inhibit the enzyme function, they could block the transcription.

Using cells developed by researchers at the University of Washington who are studying Werner syndrome, the SMU researchers were able to insert the enzyme defect that causes Werner syndrome into HIV-infected T-cells, blocking 95 percent of retroviral transcription. If the HIV/AIDS virus can’t be transcribed, it can’t replicate.

The one in 1,000 people in Japan who are Werner syndrome carriers (without developing the syndrome) have not been observed to develop AIDS, Harrod points out, suggesting that affecting the functioning of the enzyme that causes Werner syndrome is a plausible way to fight HIV/AIDS.

The beauty of the Werner syndrome-enzyme approach to HIV/AIDS treatment is that the virus can’t mutate to defeat treatment, Harrod says.

The HIV-inhibition research was published in the April 20, 2007 issue of “The Journal of Biological Chemistry.”

Harrod’s research group, which includes Master’s degree student Madhu Sukumar and three biological sciences undergraduates, now is searching for molecules that will inhibit the function of the Werner syndrome enzyme, and thus, viral replication.

Harrod’s work also is an example of the international collaboration that is occurring to find solutions to global health issues. He is collaborating on the research with Antonito Panganiban from the University of New Mexico-Health Sciences Center, Carine Van Lint from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles and two clinical researchers, Dennis Burns and Daniel Skiest, from UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

According to the World Health Organization, 33 million people are living with HIV/AIDS worldwide. That is why Professor William Orr, chair of Biological Sciences at SMU, calls Harrod’s research exciting.

“It’s going to provide an alternative way in which one might be able to deactivate or slow down this scourge,” Orr says.

Harrod joined SMU in 2002 and teaches undergraduate and graduate students. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Maryland in 1996, and received postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health and the Naval Medical Center. — Cathy Frisinger

Tags Madhu Sukumar, Robert Harrod, SMU Department of Biological Sciences, William Orr

Mind & Brain

Deep brain mapping could pinpoint Gulf War Syndrome

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date November 19, 2008
No Comments on Deep brain mapping could pinpoint Gulf War Syndrome

Researchers at Southern Methodist University are pioneering the use of spatial statistical modeling to analyze brain scan data from Persian Gulf War veterans. The goal is to pinpoint specific areas of the brain affected by Gulf War Syndrome.

Richard Gunst, Wayne Woodward and William Schucany, professors in SMU’s Department of Statistical Science in Dedman College, are collaborating with imaging specialists at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas to compare brain scans of veterans suffering from the syndrome with those of a healthy control group.

The SMU team is working with renowned UTSW epidemiologist Robert Haley, one of the foremost experts on the syndrome.

A congressionally mandated study has revealed that one of every four veterans of the 1991 Gulf War suffers from neurological symptoms collectively referred to as Gulf War Syndrome. The Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses began work in 2002 and presented its lengthy report to Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Peake on Nov. 17.Persian Gulf War veterans from across the country are being tested at UTSW using a type of brain imaging called functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or fMRI.

Richard Gunst

The veterans are tested while performing tasks intended to activate specific regions of the brain.

Photo right: Wayne Woodward

The SMU team, which includes graduate students Patrick Carmack and Jeffrey Spence, is analyzing brain activation signals reflected from the multiple images taken of each subject’s brain. From that they’ll determine which variations occur naturally and which are due to the syndrome. Previous analyses have been unable to separate real distinctions from “noise.”

Schucany%202008.jpg The SMU team’s primary challenge is in identifying differences in brain activation from locations deep within the brain using measured brain signals that are weak and vary from location to location.

Spatial modeling uses information from neighboring locations to strengthen the weak signals in active brain locations so the signal can be detected as real.

“Spatial modeling in brain imaging is new,” Gunst said. “This has not been done the way we are doing it.”
William Schucany

Rapid technological advances in medical imaging of the human brain are imposing demands for new statistical methods that can be used to detect small differences between normal and dysfunctional brain activity, Gunst said. — Kim Cobb

Tags Dedman College, Richard Gunst, Robert Haley, SMU Department of Statistical Science, Wayne Woodward, William Schucany

Culture, Society & Family Fossils & Ruins Student researchers

Digging the Etruscans: Students unearth treasures in Italy

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date November 13, 2008

Senior art history major Jayme Clemente was working in trench No. 35 in July at an archaeological dig 20 miles northeast of Florence, Italy, when something caught her eye.

“I saw something green in the dirt,” she recalls. Green is the color of oxidized bronze.

Oxidized-green bronze Etruscan coin.

“When you’ve been staring at this light brown mixture of dirt and you see something that is not in the same color palette — it was just an exhilarating feeling to know that there was something in the ground.”

Her trench supervisor raced over and confirmed the first coin discovery of SMU’s 2008 Poggio Colla Field School season in the Mugello Valley. Clemente then worked as slowly as she could to extract the item from the dirt because bronze coins are very fragile after being buried for 2,000 years.

“Your first reaction is to get it out as fast as you can, but you have to take your time and be very patient” to deliver it to the dig conservator in one piece, Clemente says. She is fascinated by the coin’s ability to reveal so many details about the culture in which it was used. Through her research she learned this particular coin was struck far to the south, somewhere between Rome and Naples, between 275 and 250 BCE.

Jayme Clemente digs at Poggio Colla.

As the site’s field manual says: “It’s not what you find, it’s what you find out.”

Clemente learned her lessons well, says P. Gregory Warden, University Distinguished Professor of Art History. He also serves as the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project’s (MVAP) principal investigator and co-director of its Poggio Colla Field School, an internationally recognized research training center in which SMU has participated since 1995.

Clemente was one of a dozen SMU students who were joined at the field school last summer by students from Dartmouth, Princeton and other universities.

The Poggio Colla site spans most of Etruscan history, from 700 BCE to the town’s destruction by the Romans around 178 BCE, which makes the site very rare. It also is distinctive because of what is not there. The Etruscans picked beautiful, easily defended hilltops for their settlements. As a result, generation after generation built new cities on top of their sites. That means many have 2,000 years of other civilizations on top of Etruscan artifacts, Warden says. Not so Poggio Colla, which is all Etruscan.

The oxidized-green bronze Etruscan coin discovered by Clemente features the head of Athena on one side, a rooster on the reverse.

No one knows why the Etruscans disappeared. Most of what archaeologists have learned about the culture in the past 40 years comes from funerary remains that represent the death rituals of the wealthy. Poggio Colla is different, Warden says. It represents an entire settlement, including tombs, a temple, a pottery factory and an artisan community. Excavations of workshops and living quarters are yielding details about Etruscan life to scholars from SMU and its partners, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Recent finds included a large stone column base that probably belonged to the temple and a ritual pit within the sanctuary where the Etruscans placed a series of sacred objects such as gold thread, two statue bases and two bronze bowls. One of the bowls rests atop the bones of a suckling pig that was sacrificed as part of a purification ritual.

The temple is revealing new information about the Etruscans, who had a theocratic social structure and were considered “the most religious peoples of the ancient Mediterranean,” Warden says. “We can show where the priest was standing and how the objects were placed in this sacred pit with attention to the cardinal points of the compass, reflecting Etruscan religious beliefs and their idea of the sacredness of space.”

The findings are so striking that the British Museum invited Warden to deliver a lecture there in December 2007 on “Ritual and Destruction at the Etruscan Site of Poggio Colla.”

The Italian government long had planned to create a regional archaeological museum in the area. The many discoveries at Poggio Colla moved that plan along, and Warden was a special guest at the museum’s opening in December.

All the artifacts found at Poggio Colla are the property of the Italian government and remain in that country. Because of connections created through the MVAP, more than 350 Etruscan artifacts from Italian museums and 100 artifacts from the field school site will be on loan to the Meadows Museum starting in January for the largest and most comprehensive Etruscan exhibits ever staged in the United States. Warden also will teach a course on “Etruscan Art and Archaeology” for the SMU Master of Liberal Studies program in the spring.

The coin that Clemente found is expected to be part of the exhibit.

“I never knew that it would be put into a museum,” she says, “but I feel pride in knowing that I was a part of the process.” — Deborah Wormser

Tags Meadows Museum, Meadows School of the Arts, P. Gregory Warden, Poggio Colla Field School