Grants kickstart bioscience research projects

Four teams of scientists at Rice University and other Gulf Coast Consortia (GCC) institutions have earned research seed grants from the John S. Dunn Collaborative Research Awards.

Winning projects include research on invasive mold infections, neural mechanisms that control carbon dioxide and oxygen levels in the blood, remediation for chemotherapy-induced hearing loss and ways to maximize radiation of tumors with gold nanoparticles. The program also will fund a multidisciplinary workshop at the intersection of regenerative medicine, neuroscience and neuroengineering.

The 10-year program began in 2008 to support new collaborations between researchers at Rices BioScience Research Collaborative (BRC) and their partners at other institutional members of the GCC. The program is funded by the John S. Dunn Foundation and administered by the GCC.

Research seed grants are awarded annually and are worth up to $100,000 each. The workshop award is $8,000. The awards support projects that foster interdisciplinary and multi-institutional research at the BRC.

Invasive mold infections

Antonios Mikos of Rice and Dimitrios Kontoyiannis of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center are seeking a way to treat necrotizing invasive mold infections suffered by patients with suppressed immune systems. The infections are difficult to treat because the mold invades and disrupts blood vessels needed to deliver antifungal medications.

The researchers will combine their expertise in biomaterials and fungi to develop an injectable polymer membrane to deliver both an antifungal medication and growth factors to stimulate blood vessel development and wound healing. When exposed to blue light, the polymer would solidify into a membrane that delivers medication and protects the damaged area but degrades as new skin cells grow over the wound.

Mikos is the Louis Calder Professor of Bioengineering and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and a professor of chemistry and materials science and nanoengineering, and director of the Center for Excellence in Tissue Engineering at Rice. Kontoyiannis is the Frances King Black Endowed Professor and deputy head of the Division of Internal Medicine at MD Anderson.

Chemotherapy-induced hearing loss

Fred Pereira of Baylor College of Medicine and James Tour of Rice will study ways to stem the side effects of widely used cisplatin chemotherapy compounds that kill cancer cells by damaging DNA. One disabling side effect is damage to normal nondividing cells in such organs as the inner ear, which can lead to high-frequency hearing loss that can progress to lower-frequency loss and tinnitus.

Read more here:
Grants kickstart bioscience research projects