Drug Screening

Probing Cellular Activity Via Charge-Sensitive Quantum Nanoprobes

SUMMARY Quantum nanoprobe system enables real-time probing of intracellular chemical environments and activity to advance biological and medical diagnostics The Unmet Need: Novel ways to probe cellular processes and improve biological sensing Understanding complex cellular processes in real-time at the single-cell level… Read More

Rad51 Inhibitors for Sensitization to Chemotherapy and Radiation

SUMMARY The Rad51 enzyme is over-expressed in many cancers and promotes chemotherapy and radiation resistance by facilitating the homologous recombination necessary for DNA lesion repair. Current therapies that target RAD51 are plagued by significant off-target effects and toxicity.  Current RAD51 inhibitors block the enzyme’s role in oncogenic homologous recombination, but… Read More

Silicon Nanomaterials for Neuronal Cell Activation

SUMMARY Silicon is highly desirable for biomedical device applications because of its thermal and mechanical properties, as well as its biocompatibility. However, its practical application is presently limited by a lack of deformability and degradability. The inventors developed a novel amorphous silicon material that retains all the advantageous properties of… Read More

Novel Small Molecule Treatment for Staphylococcus Aureus SSTI Infections

SUMMARY Staphylococcus aureus infects 50,000 patients and kills 20,000 annually in the United States alone. With widespread antibiotic resistance, there is an urgent need for alternative mechanisms of targeting S. aureus infection. One way the pathogen mediates its virulence is by secreting the pore-forming cytotoxin α-hemolysin, which causes skin and… Read More

Activity-responsive Split RNA Polymerase Platform for Biosensors and Gene Therapy

SUMMARY An understanding of protein-protein interactions (PPIs) is critical to uncovering new disease pathophysiology and for developing small molecule and antibody treatments. Problematically, current approaches to assay PPIs are limited by sensitivity, signal to noise ratio, and the need to carefully optimize the assay for each new application. The inventors… Read More