Content of this page:

News from Lab and from our previous members
On the Road (2008, 2007), Reports & photos

updated September, 2008

NEWS

Grants

• A new NIH RO1 grant in the area of prostate cancer treatment has been awarded for a 5-year period ending in 2013.

• The RO1 competing renewal on "Bone-targeted macromolecular therapeutics" has been scored by the NIH Study Section at the 1.7%. The grant was extended for a 4-year period until July 2012.

• The University of Utah awarded us a seed grant on Dynamic hydrogels capable of translating enzyme-substrate recognition into macromolecular motion (2008-2009).

• The United States-"Israel Binational Science Foundation awarded a collaborative grant "A New Polymer-Drug Combination Therapy for Targeting Ovarian Cancer" to Dr. Ayelet David, Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva, to collaborate with our laboratory (2008-2010)

STUDENT DEFENSES in 2008

• Vaikunth Cuchelkar, defended his Ph.D. dissertation on April 23, 2008

• Padmanbh Chivukula defended his Ph.D. dissertation on May 19, 2008

• Jarunee Hongrapipat, exchange student from Thailand, performed all experiments for her dissertation in our lab from 2005 to 2007. She defended her Ph.D. dissertation at Mahidol University on May 20, 2008

• Songqi Gao defended her Ph.D. dissertation on May 29, 2008

• Weiwei Yuan defended her M.S. thesis on August 6, 2008

COLLABORATION AGREEMENT

Our (Biomedical Polymers) Laboratory signed a collaborative agreement with the National Engineering Research Center for Biomaterials, Sichuan University, China. The Center of Professor Zhong-wei Gu and our laboratory will perform collaborative research projects and exchange graduate students and scientists in the period 2008-2012.

News from our past members

• Hamid Ghandehari (Ph.D. 1996) joined the Departments of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, and of Bioengineering, University of Utah as USTAR Professor in November 2007. Welcome back home!
• Tamara Minko, Ph.D. (Research faculty 1997-2000) was appointed Chair, Department of Pharmaceutics, Rutgers University.
• Dong Wang, Ph.D. (postdoctoral and research faculty 1998-2004) was aworded tenure and promoted to Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Nebraska Medical Center
• David Putnam (Ph.D. 1995) was awarded tenure and promoted to Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at Cornell University. David was awarded the Controlled Release Society 2007 Young Investigator Award. This award honors the best scientist in drug delivery of age below 40.
• Hsin-Cheng Chiu (Ph.D. 1994) is (full) Professor of Chemical Engineering at National Chung-Hsing University, Taiwan.
• Ping Yang Yeh (Ph.D. 1994) moved to California. He is a group leader at BiogenIDEC.

NEW AND ROTATING STUDENTS/VISITORS

• Ehud Segal, student of Dr. Ronit Satchi-Fainaro visited April-May 2008 to work get acquainted with the synthesis of HPMA copolymer conjugates.
• Hillevi Bauer, Philipps University Marburg, Germany joined our laboratory in May 2008 for 6 months in the framework of the GPEN (Global Pharmaceutics Education Network) exchange program.
• Timucin Ugurlu, Ph.D., University of Marmara, Istanbul, Turkey joined our laboratory on February 1, 2008 for 8 months research visit.
• Shraddha Sadekar, a Patel Fellow from he Department of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Chemistry joined our laboratory for a rotation on January 7, 2008.

AWARDS

• JINDRICH KOPECEK
  Honorary Professorship, Sichuan University, China, 2007
  Busse Lectures, University of Wisconsin, May 2006
  Distinguished H. Morawetz Lecture, Brooklyn Polytechnic University, October 2006
  Distiguished International Scientist Award, Japanese Biomaterials Society, November 2006
  
• KUANGSHI WU received the American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education Award (2007 and 2008)

LAB VISITORS

• Prof. Sergiy Minko, Clarkson University visited our lab on July 14. He also presented a departmental seminar.
• Prof. Dusan Berek from the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia, visited our group for four days in April 2008. He presented a lecture on the departmental seminar: Liquid Chromatography of Synthetic Polymers.
• Prof. Ronit Satchi-Fainaro from Tel Aviv University visited our lab on April 16-17, 2008. She presented a departmental seminar lecture. Her graduate student Ehud Segal stayed for 2 months to work on a collaboration project.
• Dr. Ayelet David from Ben Gurion University, Israel visited in July 2007 to discuss collaborations in the area of targetable anticancer drugs.
• Prof. Thomas Kissel from the Philipps University Marburg, Germany visited in July 2007. He presented a Distinguished Department Seminar, discussed student exchange, and we planned collaborative work on the relationship between their structure and physicochemical properties.
• Dr. Cestmir Konak from the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, visited our laboratory for more than two weeks in May 2007. He taught a one-week laboratory course in light scattering for the Department's graduate students, and then he worked with Jane and Kuangshi on the kinetics of self-assembly of graft copolymers into hydrogels.
• Prof. Blanka Rihova and Dr. Ondrej Hovorka from the Institute of Microbiology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, visited our laboratory for 10 days in February- March 2007 to work on our mutual Fogarty grant on immunochemotherapy.

On the Road 2008

In February, Henry took part in the evaluation of Merck's research program. In April, Henry presented an invited lecture at the American Chemical Society Meeting in New Orleans. It was his first visit after Katrina. The center of the city has looked great, the suburbs need a lot of work. Jane and Larisa presented posters at the FNANO08 conference in Snowbird, Utah- a 25-minute drive from campus. At the end of April, Pavla and Henry traveled to Taiwan to present invited lectures at the International Drug Delivery Symposium at the National Tsing Hua University (the picture from the symposium organized excursion to 101 building in Taipei is shown). The conference was excellent, but the highlight of the travel was meeting our former student, Professor Hsin-Cheng Chiu and other University of Utah alumni. A report from the dinner with alumni is below. In May, Pavla traveled to Valencia, Spain to present at the International Symposium on Polymer Therapeutics. In June, Henry went on an "around the world" trip; first to Stockholm, Sweden to present an invited lecture at the International Workshop on Biomacromolecules. He continued to Chongqing, China (via Beijing and visit of Peking University) to deliver an invited talk at the US/China Materials Research Societies Meeting. Jane flew in from Salt Lake City and presented a poster. After several days in Salt Lake City, Henry left for Cardiff, UK to give an invited lecture at the Symposium on Cellular Delivery of Therapeutic Macromolecules. In September, Henry, Pavla, Jihua, and Huaizhong took part in the Gordon Conference on Drug Carriers in Medicine and Biology in Big Sky, Montana (see photos at "Social"). We were quite active-one discussion leader, on short oral talk, and two posters. Big Sky can be reached in 6 hours by car via West Yellowstone. It is a pity that the Gordon Conferences Headquarters are planning to close this site. After the meeting, Jihua and Huaizhong visited Yellowstone National Park and Henry and Pavla went to Glacier National Park. Stunning countryside! In September, Weiwei presented a poster at the Annual Mountain West Biomedical Engineering Conference in Park City and Henry traveled to Enzon to discuss our results in the area anticancer therapeutics.

More to come to cover October-December!

Alumni dinner in Taipei 2008

Participants:

• Hsin-Cheng Chiu, Ph.D. Pharm. Chem. 1994 (J. Kopecek); at present Professor of Chemical Engineering. National Chung Hsing University
• Chien-Hsin Daniel Cheng, Ph.D. U of Michighan, postdoctoral U of U (W.I. Higuchi); at present Consultant, Industrial Technology Research Institute, Hsinchu
• Chung-Yih Wang, Ph.D. Bioengineering 1997 (J. Andrade), at present Assistant Professor of Bioengineering, Tatung University
• Muh-Hwan Su, Ph.D. Pharm. Chem. 1992 (W.I. Higuchi); at present Chief Scientific Officer, Sinphar Group
• I-Nan Chang, Ph.D. Mat. Sci. 1994 (J. Andrade); at present R&D Manager, ANT Technology Co.
• Jer Hsu, Ph.D. Chem. Eng. 1993 (W.I. Higuchi); at present Scientific Officer, Essentia Co.
• Yeong-Shang (John) Lin, Ph.D. Mat. Sci. 1993 (J. Andrade); at present General Manager Broptics Technology Inc.
• Jeff Chang, Ph.D. Pharm. Chem. 2007 (S.W. Kim); at present postdoctoral at UCLA
• Yuan-Hung Hsu, Ph.D. Chem. Eng. 2006 Chung Hsing U. (H.C. Chiu; 2^nd generation Utah); at present Scientific Officer, Industrial Technology Research Institute, Hsinchu

It was a real pleasure for us to visit our former student Hsin-Cheng Chiu, Ph.D., now Professor of Chemical Engineering at the National Chung Hsing University (http://web.nchu.edu.tw/~hcchiu/index.htm). He and his group are doing very well.

On the Road 2007

In February, Henry and Jihua Liu traveled to the 7^th International Symposium on Polymer Therapeutics in Berlin, Germany. Henry was invited to give a plenary lecture on the state-of-the-art in the field and Jihua presented a poster on the mechanism of internalization of polymer conjugates. They returned in time for the 13^th International Symposium on Recent Advances in Drug Delivery Systems, which took place at the end of February in Salt Lake City. Our whole laboratory took part in the meeting; Jon Callahan, Jihua Liu, Jarunee Hongrapipat, Huaizhong Pan, and Alexander Malugin presented posters. In March Henry chaired an NIH site visit to Rutgers University and presented a department seminar at the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Wyoming in Laramie. In April, Henry presented seminars at the Department of Molecular Pharmaceutics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and at GlaxoSmithKline in Research Triangle Park, NC. At the end of the month Henry traveled to Amsterdam to take part in the Pharmaceutical Sciences World Congress. He organized a scientific session and presented an invited lecture. In May, Henry and Pavla traveled to the Czech Republic to take part in the meeting of the Czech Learned Society (Henry is a honorary member) and to present a plenary (Henry) and invited (Pavla) lectures at the 5^th International Workshop on Drug Delivery Systems in Trest. At the end of May Henry traveled to Montreal, Quebec to present an invited lecture at the10th International Symposium on Pharmaceutical Sciences. In late August, Henry visited the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic to evaluate data of mutual research and prepare manuscripts. From Prague, Henry went to Manchester, UK where he presented at the British Pharmaceutical Society Meting, at a section organized by the UK-Ireland local chapter of the Controlled Release Society. A highlight of the conference was a dinner meeting with Prof. John Lloyd a collaborator since 1978! In late September, Henry, Russell, Larisa, Jane, Huaizhong, and Kuangshi took part in the 3^rd Intermountain West Biomedical Engineering Conference in Park City. In October, Henry and Pavla traveled to China at the invitation of Professor Zhong-wei Gu. Henry gave lectures at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing; West China School of Pharmacy, Sichuan University, Chengdu; and at the National Engineering Research Center for Biomaterials, Sichuan University. In addition, Henry took part in the ceremony awarding him an Honorary Professorship of Sichuan University and in discussions on a collaborative agreement between the Center and our laboratory. On the way back, Henry and Pavla stopped in Shanghai to visit the new Shanghai Tissue Engineering Center. The weekend in Sichuan was amazing, the Jiuzhaigou and Huanglong Valleys are stunning; it is a dreamlike beauty! Finally, Henry, Kuangshi, and Jane traveled to Hattiesburg, Mississippi for the 2^nd Annual International Symposium on Stimuli-Responsive Materials. Henry presented a plenary lecture and Jane and Kuangshi posters. Of interest was the tour of the facilities; there are 18 faculties with polymer-related research at the University of Southern Mississippi.

updated September, 2008

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