COBRE Director

Joseph M. Fox, Ph.D., Francis Alison Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Professor of Material Science and Engineering

Fox CV 
Fox Research
Jmfox@udel.edu

Current Project Leaders

Karl Schmitz, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences
Dissection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Clp protease assembly, activity and regulation

Maria Ramona Neunuebel, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences
Molecular mechanisms supporting bacterial survival within immune cells

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., Assistant 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., Associate 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., Associate 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., Associate 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., Assistant 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., Assistant Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry
Elucidating the molecular mechanisms of small-molecule disruption of viral replication machinery

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 Jarmillo-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

Administrative Supplements

Current

Administrative Supplement for Research on Women’s Health
Jodi Hadden-Perilla. Molecular dynamics of the human papillomavirus type 16 capsid to identify novel drug targets 

Administrative Supplement for Equipment
$248,183 to purchase an upgrade of an Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Spectrometer

Administrative Supplement to fund Team Science Development Projects
Shuo Wei, Karl Schmitz and Sigrid Langhans. Development of probes and inhibitors for ADAM9.

Completed

Administrative Supplement for Research on Women’s Health
William Chain. Icetexan Natural Products as New Lead Compounds Toward Breast Cancer Chemotherapeutics

Administrative Supplement for Alzheimer’s-Focused Research
Laure Kayser.  High sensitivity electrochemical detection of amyloid-β aggregates to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease

Administrative Supplement for Equipment
$250,000 to purchase a Waters Xevo TM TQ-S micro mass spectrometer UPLC system

Administrative Supplement for Equipment
$240,446 to purchase a 5mm Bruker Prodigy CryoProbe

COBRE Staff

Dawn Yasik, COBRE Administrative Coordinator

dyasik@udel.edu

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