COBRE Discovery of Chemical Probes and Therapeutic Leads

an NIH Center of Biomedical Research Excellence

COBRE Team

Our COBRE faculty have been recognized with the nation’s most competitive awards to young scientists

Accomplishments Include:

  • 80 COBRE supported publications by junior investigators
    (~25% in IF 11.0+ journals, ~50% in IF 5.0+ journals)
  • >60 additional publications cite core facilities
  • COBRE investigators gave nearly 300 invited talks
  • Five junior investigators have graduated to independent status
  • 6 NIH grants (5 R01s, 1 U01) were awarded to four junior investigators and two COBRE hires
  • Recognized through >20 national awards, including
    • Sloan Foundation Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (2)
    • Pew Scholars in the Biomedical Sciences (2)
    • Cottrell Research Scholar by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement
    • Inter-American Photochemical Society Young Investigator Award
    • NSF Career awards (5)
    • American Chemical Society Rising Star Award
    • Dreyfus Foundation Environmental Chemistry Mentor
    • Oak Ridge Associated Universities Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award
    • ACS Inorganic Chemistry Undergraduate Research Mentor Award
    • Komen Career Catalyst Research Award

 

Awards to Phase I Investigators

Phase I Investigators

Phase I Investigators: (left to right): April Kloxin, Joel Rosenthal, Catherine Leimkuhler Grimes, Joe Fox, Ed Lyman, Mary Watson, BJ Chain (COBRE hire), Don Watson. Not pictured are Shuo Wei (COBRE hire), Karl Schmitz and Yvette Yien (Replacement Project Investigators).

FUNDING ACCOMPLISHMENTS

  • Four NIH funded COBRE ‘graduates’ (D. Watson; M. Watson; Lyman; Grimes)
  • Five NIH R01 awards (D. Watson; M. Watson; Lyman; Chain; Wei)
  • NIH U01 (Grimes
  • Three NSF grants (D. Watson; M. Watson; Chain)

EARLY CAREER AWARDS to PROJECT LEADERS and HIRES

  • Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (Grimes)
  • Two Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellows (Grimes, Rosenthal)
  • Two Pew Scholars in the Biomedical Sciences (A. Kloxin, Grimes)
  • Two Cottrell Research Scholars by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (D. Watson, Grimes)
  • Inter-American Photochemical Society Young Investigator Award (Rosenthal)
  • Five NSF Faculty Early Career Development Awards (D. Watson, M. Watson, Grimes, Rosenthal, Kloxin)
  • American Chemical Society WCC Rising Star Award (M. Watson)
  • ACS Infectious Diseases Young Investigator (Grimes)
  • Dreyfus Foundation Environmental Chemistry Mentor (Rosenthal)
  • Oak Ridge Associated Universities Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award (Rosenthal)
  • ACS Inorganic Chemistry Undergraduate Research Mentor Award (Rosenthal)
  • Komen Career Catalyst Research Award (Kloxin)
  • Mitzutani Glycoscience Award (Grimes)
  • NIH K01 Award (Yien)
  • NIH R03 Award (Yien)

AWARDS to PILOT PROJECT INVESTIGATORS

  • ACS Polymer Materials Science & Engineering Young Investigator (C. Kloxin)
  • NSF CAREER Award (Neunuebel)
  • Dept. of Energy Young Investigator (Gundlach)
Current Project Leaders

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

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

 

 

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