Lab News
September 2025
Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Society meeting, Rochester NY
The Erber lab attended the Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Society (EMGS) meeting in Rochester, NY. The conference organizers presented Dr. Reinner Omondi with a travel award. Dr. Reinner Omondi presented a poster titled "Methylglyoxal-induced deoxyguanosine-lysine crosslinks in cells".
August 2025
American Chemical Society, Fall Conference, Washington DC
The Erber lab attended the ACS Fall 2025 national meeting in Washington DC (August 17-21). Dr. Erber chaired the Toxicology division's student and postdoctoral symposium. Students presented their research on endogenous sources of DNA damage. We also enjoyed some sightseeing and an evening of baseball.
Dr. Reinner Omondi presented a talk titled "Characterizing methylglyoxal-induced dG-lysine crosslinks in cells".
Krishna Gurajala presented a poster titled "Investigation of glyoxal-induced DNA-protein crosslinks". The ACS chemical toxicology division gave Krishna a travel award to support his attendance of the ACS conference.
Congratulations to Dr. Reinner Omondi!
The 2025 Next Generation Faculty Symposium selected Dr. Omondi as a 2025 Honorable Mention participant. The Next Generation Faculty Symposium targets exemplary early career researchers for faculty hiring efforts. This symposium highlight the work of late-stage graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Speakers are selected based on demonstrated scientific excellence, evaluated based on prior research achievement and significant prior contributions to mentorship and community engagement. A majority of honorable mentions go on to be faculty.
https://www.berkeleystanfordnextgensymposium.com
July 2025
University of Kansas Cancer Center's Cancer Biology Research Retreat
The Erber Lab participated in The University of Kansas Cancer Center’s Cancer Biology research program's annual retreat. Lab members developed new connections and exchanged insights on DNA damage and repair.
May 2025
The Erber lab celebrates the end of the spring semester and recognize two undergraduate students who are graduating, Gabrielle Fisette and Eli Barnes. These students will be greatly missed and we wish them all the best in their next laboratory jobs and graduate education!
April 2025
MIKIW Medicinal Chemistry Conference @ University of Kansas
The MIKIW conference brings together graduate students and professionals from departments of Medicinal Chemistry from the Universities of Minnesota, Illinois at Chicago, Kansas, Iowa, and Wisconsin to share their research projects, knowledge, and advancements in the field of medicinal chemistry. This conference provides a platform for attendees to network, exchange ideas, and collaborate on future projects. The conferences covers a range of topics, including drug design, total and semi-synthesis, analytical chemistry, pharmacology, drug delivery, synthetic biology, natural product drug leads, molecular/cell biology, and more.
Our graduate students hosted and managed the entire conference proceedings.
(Pictured are Dr. Reinner Omondi (left) and Krishna Gurajala (right) presenting their research posters)
January 2025
Zhe Wang joins the Erber Lab as a Ph.D. student from the department of medicinal chemistry. Zhe will be developing tools to study mechanisms of targeted protein degradation.
December 2024
New findings on DNA-Protein Crosslinks published!
Our work expands the understanding how the gene SPRTN contributes to maintaining genomic integrity upon exposure to ionizing radiation and endogenous reactive oxygen species. Special thanks to Dr. Machida and Dr. Tretyakova for their tremendous support!
Dr. Mark Hedglin visits us!
Dr. Erber hosted Dr. Mark Hedglin from Pennsylvania State University to speak to the department of medicinal chemistry.
November 2024
University of Kansas Cancer Center Research Week
Dr. Reinner Omondi presents on the lab's research into dysregulation of glucose metabolism.
October 2024
Chemical Biology Symposium and Medicinal Chemistry Rotation 2!
Dr. Erber presented on DNA-protein interactions at the Chemical Biology Symposium. Dr. Erber is a faculty mentor in this NIH sponsored T32 program.
Erber lab welcomes two new Ph.D. students from the medicinal chemistry graduate program! Guangyu Zhang and Zhe Wang are joining as rotation students.
September 2024
Congratulations to Farai Musonza!
The Erber lab congratulates Farai Musonza as she embarks on her pharmacy education at the KU School of Pharmacy! We wish her all the best as she prepares for a pharmacy career!
Mass Spectrometry Training
Wes Rogers, from Thermo Scientific, provided training on Vanquish Neo liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry using the linear triple quadrupole Altis Plus instrument. This training included LC and MS theory, hands-on maintenance, molecule identification and quantation, and proteomics.
August 2024
Fall Semester Begins!
The Erber lab welcomes two new graduate students from the medicinal chemistry graduate program! Krishna Gurajala (left) is joining as a master's student and Manan Kothari (right) is joining as a rotation student in the Ph.D. program.
American Chemical Society, Fall Conference, Denver CO
The Erber lab attended the fall conference for the American Chemical Society. Dr. Erber chaired the Toxicology division's student and postdoctoral symposium.
Congratulations to Dr. Reinner Omondi!
Dr. Reinner Omondi was awarded a Travel Award by the KU Postdoc Association!
Reinner gave a talk at the American Chemical Society, National Fall Conference entitled "Probing tridentate bis(benzazole) ligands for structural insights, substitution kinetics, DNA interactions, and cytotoxic effects".
July 2024
Skyline Training
Dr. Erber attended the Skyline software workshop at the University of Seattle. We are excited to incorporate new Data Independent Acquisition methods to our work at the University of Kansas!
June 2024
Gray Little Hall, Erber Lab
The LTQ-Altis triple quadrupole mass spectrometer from ThermoFisher Scientific is installed! We're excited to use this instrument to push research boundaries and provide top-of-the-line mass spectrometry training!
May 2024
Reinner Omondi, Ph.D. joins the lab
We are excited to have Dr. Reinner Omondi join the Erber lab. He completed his Ph.D. education in Chemistry at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, in South Africa, under the mentorship of Professor Ojwach. He also completed a short postdoctoral training with Professor Smith at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. We are excited for what the future holds for him here!
End of semester Erber lab dinner
The Erber lab visits Fields and Ivy for dinner to celebrate end of Spring 2024 semester and exams. We look forward to focusing on research this summer!
(Pictured: Eli Barnes, Dr. Reinner Omondi, Dr. Luke Erber, Gabrielle Fisette, Farai Musonza)
First research paper published with ACS Chemical Biology
With our collaborators at the schools of Pharmacies at the University of Minnesota and the University of Arizona, we examine the role of methylglyoxal in the formation of DNA-protein crosslinks.
April 2024
MIKIW Medicinal Chemistry Conference
The conference brings together graduate students and professionals from departments of Medicinal Chemistry from the Universities of Minnesota, Illinois at Chicago, Kansas, Iowa, and Wisconsin to share their research projects, knowledge, and advancements in the field of medicinal chemistry. This conference provides a platform for attendees to network, exchange ideas, and collaborate on future projects. The conferences covers a range of topics, including drug design, total and semi-synthesis, analytical chemistry, pharmacology, drug delivery, synthetic biology, natural product drug leads, molecular/cell biology, and more.
(Pictured are the attendees from Kansas, Pomerantz group members and alumni, and the School of Pharmacy at UIC)
March 2024
American Chemical Society, Division of Chemical Toxicology
Dr. Erber chaired the spring virtual symposium of the ACS, Chemical Toxicology Division. The topic was "Integrative Analysis of ‘Omics Data for Identification of Pathways Related to Toxicity". We heard from five wonderful speakers on how 'Omics technologies are used to study how xenobiotics are biotransformed, to identify the cellular response to xenobiotic exposure, and provide information for personalized patient treatment.
Page updated
Report abuse