The goal of our laboratory is to design targeted drugs and targeted drug delivery approaches. By targeting drugs to diseased tissues, toxic side effects can be avoided, while drug efficacy is enhanced. To tackle this important problem, our laboratory is devoted to the development of approaches that will deliver drugs, proteins and nucleic acids to diseased tissues and not normal tissues. This challenge is being met by exploiting discoveries from our laboratory in enzymology, prodrug design, chemical biology and nanobiotechnology. The experimental approach taken by our laboratory is highly multidisciplinary, relying on the tools of synthetic chemistry, medicinal chemistry, enzymology, molecular biology, biochemical pharmacology, X-ray crystallography, molecular modeling and spectroscopy to address our goal.

Congrats to Peter Huynh (Univ. Minn.), Morgan Schwoch (Univ. Minn) and Sarah Lund (MIT) for doing a great job this summer as undergraduate student researchers! Have a a great year !

Congrats to Do-Hyoung Park for great enthusiasm and commitment in completing his second high school summer internship! Good luck with the college apps !

St. Croix 2011 !! Great water and great food !!

Kudos to Sanaa Bardaweel on the publication of her paper, "Hint, A Histidine Triad Nucleotide Binding Proteins, is Essential for Alanine Metabolism in Escherichia coli,” Plos One, 6, (2011) doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0020897 !

Congrats to Tsu-fen Chou for her contributions to publication, “Role of Cathepsin A and Lysosomes in the Intracellular Activation of Novel Antipapillomavirus Agent GS-9191”, Antimicrob. Agents Chemother., 55, 2166-2173 (2011).

Congrats to Jing Jing Shen and her family on the birth of their new son, David !!

Nice job ! Adrian Fegan presented his poster, “Chemically Self-Assembled Antibody Nanostructures (CSANs) for Targeted Cellular Delivery”, at IBC’s 21st Annual Antibody Engineering and 8th Annual Antibody Therapeutics, Dec. 5-9, 2010, San Diego, CA.

Kudos to Sid Kumarapperuma for being selected to present a poster entitled, “Biofunctionalization of dendrimer nanoparticles with DHFR-scFv's for targeted delivery, imaging and therapy in cancer”, at the Keystone Symposium on Antibodies as Drugs, Feb. 6-11, 2011, Keystone, CA.