COBRE Team


Current Project Leaders
Maria Ramona Neunuebel, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences
Molecular mechanisms supporting bacterial survival within immune cells
Jodi Hadden-Perilla, Ph.D., C. Eugene Bennett Early Career Chair of Chemistry
Molecular dynamics of the HBV capsid to advance the search for antivirals
Jeremy Bird, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences
Development of tools to identify and characterize UDP-Sugar metabolite RNA caps
Funding Accomplishments
32 NIH awards to 21 investigators:
9 RO1s
10 R35s
2 DP2 NIH New Investigators
2 P01s
1 UO1
3 R21s
2 R03s
1 U54
2 R00s
NSF awards to 20 investigators
COBRE Director
Joseph M. Fox, Francis Alison Professor, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry; Department of Materials Science & Engineering
jmfox@udel.edu
Fox CV
Fox Research
Phase I COBRE “graduates”
April Kloxin, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
In vitro neural disease models for high throughput screening
Catherine Leimkuhler Grimes,
Ph.D., Professor, Biochemistry and Organic Chemistry The Leimkuhler Grimes Group is using carbohydrate chemistry and bacterial cell wall engineering to aid in the understanding of inflammatory disease.
Don Watson, Ph.D., Willis Harrington Professor, Organic Chemistry
Don Watson’s group explores new transition metal catalysts for organic chemistry. We are developing new reactions for use in both organic synthesis and library development for medicinal chemistry.
Mary Watson, Ph.D., Professor, Organic Chemistry
Mary Watson’s group uses transition metal catalysts to develop enantioselective and stereospecific reactions. Their goal is greater efficiency and novel bond constructions in the synthesis of chiral drug-like molecules.
Joel Rosenthal, PhD., Professor, Inorganic Chemistry
The Rosenthal Group is developing electrochemical techniques for high throughput screening to discover new drug leads and is developing new approaches to photodynamic therapy.
Ed Lyman, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Physics and Physical Chemistry
Drug discovery is a long and costly process. The Lyman Group is developing computational methods that will enable medicinal chemists to streamline the drug discovery process.
Phase II COBRE “graduates”
Catherine Fromen, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Surface-functionalized nanoparticle adjuvants for pulmonary immune modulation
Jeffrey Mugridge, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry
Molecular mechanisms supporting bacterial survival within immune cells
Aditya Kunjapur, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
Designing real-time bacterial reporting of enzymes secreted by mammalian cells
Juan Perilla, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry
Elucidating the molecular mechanisms of small-molecule disruption of viral replication machinery
Karl Schmitz, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences
Dissection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Clp protease assembly, activity and regulation
COBRE hires
Phase I, the center supported the hire of three faculty.
William Chain Studies the area of natural products synthesis and medicinal chemistry.
Shuo Wei Studies the regulation of cell signaling by extracellular metalloproteinases in development and disease, and he is PI of an active R01 from NIGMS.
Karl Schmitz Studies Clp protease function and regulation with small molecule probes
Phase II Hires
Ariel Alperstein is focused on developing new ultrafast vibrational spectroscopy techniques for investigating biological systems on the sub-micron scale
Marco Messina is focused on the creation of functional macromolecular materials for probing biological systems
Phase I Pilot Project Awardees
Lars Gundlach. Ultrafast spectroscopy of photosensitizers for photodynamic therapy
Arun Kumar. Development of a nanoparticle-based theranostic agent to treat IBC metastasis
Eric Bloch. Design of metal-organic cage molecules for aerosol pulmonary theranostics
Catherine Fromen. Design of metal-organic cage molecules for aerosol pulmonary theranostics
Ramona Neunuebel. Molecular mechanisms supporting bacterial survival within immune cells
Christopher Kloxin. CNA aptamer screening library for TNF binding
William Chain. Englerin A – A future human chemotherapeutic
Aimee Jaramillo-Lambert. Molecular mechanisms of Topoisomerase II regulation in meiotic chromosome segregation
Edward Lyman. Measuring and simulating adenosine receptor ligand unbinding kinetics
Phase II Pilot Project Awardees
Jeremy Bird. Developing riboCapZyme-seq, a new method for the detection and quantitation of metabolite capping on translated RNAs
Jodi Hadden-Perilla. Elucidating and flipping the conformational switch that regulates hepatitis B virus capsid assembly
Alexei Kananenka. Computational modeling of radiolabeled nanomaterials for cancer therapy
Aditya Kunjapur. Investigating biosynthesis of a photolabile amino acid for polypeptide control
Molly Sutherland. Development of CcsBA, the holocytorchrome c synthase, as a novel antibiotic target
Emil Hernandez-Pagan.Tailored nanocrystals for NIR generation of ROS for photodynamic therapy
Ariel Alperstein. Investigating the effect of microplastics on chaperone protein structure and function
Austin Keeler. Deciphering the molecular landscape of neurotrophin driven lineage decisions by neural mass cytometry
Marco Messina. 3-Dimensional Cluster-Based Materials for Multimodal Bioimaging of Reactive Oxygen/Nitrogen Species
John Koh. Cross-linking antigens for targeted immunotherapies
External Advisory Committee
Paramjit Arora, Ph.D., Professor, New York University
Peter Chien, Ph.D., Professor, University of Massachusetts
Andrew Combs, Ph.D., Executive Vice President and Head of Chemistry, Prelude Therapeutics
Spencer Dreher, Ph.D., Research Fellow and Head of the Process Chemistry Automation Lab, Merck Process
Klaus Gawrisch, Ph.D., Senior Investigator and Chief of the Laboratory of Membrane Biochemistry and Biophysics, NIAAA, NIH
Karl Scheidt, Ph.D., Professor and Director of the Northwestern Center for Molecular Innovation and Drug Discovery, Northwestern University
Stefan Serafianos, Ph.D., Professor, Emory University
Associate Directors in Medicinal Chemistry and Translational Research
Peter Bernstein, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at University of Delaware, Principal, PhaRmaB, LLC
John Koh, Ph.D., Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Associate Director, Delaware Biotechnology Institute
Melinda Duncan, Ph.D., Professor, Biological Sciences, Professor, Animal and Food Sciences