News

Kudos to first year student Nusha Mikolchak for passing her written exam!

Third year student Jigar Sethiya gave a excellent talk outlining his progress can the challenges  in developing therapeutic pyridine based AHA proTides for Dengue and Zika viruses on July 16, 2024 during the summer Medicinal Chemistry Seminar Program. Good job!

Congrats to second year students, Kostana Ligori and Bryan Magana for doing and excellent job passing their oral preliminary exams! Official PhD candidates!!

Kudos to chem. graduate student, Debasmita Paul, for being selected for Best Talk Honorable Mention honors for her presentation on her research designing and developing bispecific nanorings targeting T-cell  TCRs. at the Chemistry Graduate Symposium. Way to go!

Rick attended and spoke at the Gordon Research Conference on Bioorganic Chemistry.  His talk was entitled, "Engineering Cell-Cell Communications with Chemically Self-Assembled Nanorings." He also presented a poster, entitled, " Hint1 Inhibitors as Selective Modulators of MOR-NMDAR Cross Regulation and Analgesia."

Way to go! Scientist Declan Dahlberg has been accepted into the MD/Ph.D Program at Tulane University! Looking forward to very promising career!

Debasmita Paul, chem. graduate student, presented a poster entitled, "Solid Tumor Targeting by Cytotoxic T-cells with α-T-cell Receptor Nanobody Chemically Self-Assembled Nanorings (CSANs)", at the 20th PEGS-Boston Conference, one of the top protein engineering conferences in the country.

Kudos to  Dr. Yiao Wang, Dr Lakmal Rozulmalski and Dr. Ozgun Kilic on the publication of their recent paper demonstrating the drug delivery potential of chemically self-assembled nanorings! Yiao was jointly advised by Rick and Prof. Mark Distefano in the Dept. Chemistry. [Wang, Yiao, Distefano, Mark, and Wagner, Carston R., “Targeted Drug Delivery by MMAE Farnesyl Bioconjugated Multivalent Chemically Self-Assembled Nanorings Induces Potent Receptor Dependent Immunogenic Cell Death”, Bioconjugate Chemistry, 35, 5, 582-592 (2024].

Congratulations to Dr. Brandi McKnight another great newly minted Wagner Lab Ph.D.!!! Brandi carried out the first studies of chemically self-assembled nanoring (CSAN) T-cell Engagers (TCE) composed of monomers incorporating an anti-CD3 ligand and a tumor targeting ligand. These are some of the most powerful cytotoxic TCE we have ever developed; thus demonstrating the tremendous potential of this approach. In particular, she and associate Declan Dahlberg, have shown they can be used to prepare trispecific CSAN-TCE, thus greatly enhancing their potential specificity. Upon graduation, Brandi will join Takeda Pharmaceuticals, Inc. as a Global Medical Affairs Fellow. MedChem Gopher Proud!

Med. Chem. Graduate student, Abhishek Kulkarni and Rick participate at the 2024 AACR Annual Meeting, April 5-10th in San Diego! Abhishek presented a poster entitled, "HINT1 Steric Masked, Protease-Activatable Bispecific Protein Nanorings Direct Human T and NK cells to Eradicate EGFR+ Solid Tumors". The poster summarized his recent efforts in developing tumor-specific immune cell engagers to mitigate "on-target, off-tumor toxicities". 

Med. Chem. Graduate student Jigar Sethiya attended the  EFMC | ACS MEDI Medicinal Chemistry Frontiers 2024 meeting #MedChemFrontiers24 in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Jigar presented a poster on is work developing novel antiviral ProTides against Dengue and Zika virus infections. 

Congrats to Abhishek Kulkarni and Jacob Smith for being student recipients of the Dept. MVP Awards in recognition for their outstanding effort 

Kudos to Caitlin Lichtenfel for being awarded a Rowell Fellowship! The Ted Rowell Graduate Fellowships are awarded to full-time CoP PhD graduate students who are conducting research in basic pharmaceutical sciences with an emphasis in nutrition or drug delivery systems.  Her research investigates cell-based drug delivery using farnesylated chemically self-assembled nanorings. Read about the challenges she has faced and her path to a love of medicinal chemistry!

Bryan Magana, second year Med.Chem. student gave a very informative talk to the dept. entitled, "The Discovery of Lenacapavir: The First In-Class HIV Capsid Inhibitor", Feb. 13, 2024.

Congrats to Caitlin Lichtenfels for being the recipient of a University of Minnesota Louise T. Dosdaall Endowed Graduate Fellowship! The $25,000 Dosdall Fellowship is awarded annually to two outstanding advanced female doctoral graduate students in the area of Natural or Physical Sciences and Engineering. Time to celebrate!

Enjoyed this great collaboration between the Pomerantz, Distefano and Wagner Labs! Pushing the boundaries of F-NMR with protein nanorings!  Li, Jiaqian; Wang, Yiao, Distefano, Mark, Wagner, Carston R. and Pomerantz, William "Multivalent Fluorinated Nanorings for On-Cell 19F NMR", Biomacromolecules, 25, 2, 1330–1339 (2024)

A big welcome to new Wagner Lab members, first year Med. Chem. students, Nusha Mikolchak and Megan Voisinet!

Kostana Ligori, second year Med.Chem. student gave an excellent survey talk to the dept. entitled, "Mapping Small Molecule Binding Sites Using Photoproximity Labeling", Oct. 31, 2023.

Rick gave an invited Webinar in Cardiff University, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences , UK, entitled, "HINTs: From ProTide Activators to Novel Pain Targets".

Rick and Abhishek Kulkarni attended the NCI symposium on Cancer Nanotechnology at Frederick MD. Abhishek presented a poster on Pro-CSANs approaches.

Kudos to Brandi McKnight for completing a three month internship with Takada Inc. at their Boston location in the area of continuing medical education.

The group enjoyed the third Wagner Con at Two Harbors, MN, August 14-17. Great talks, food and fun!

Congrats to Dr. Nicole Bentz for successfully defending her Medicinal Chemistry Ph.D. dissertation, entitled, "Harnessing the Synergistic Self-Assembly of G-Quadruplex-Peptide Phosphoramidates: From Elucidating Assembly Mechanisms and Hydrogel Characteristics to Applications in Supramolecular Drug Delivery" . Nicole will be joining Genentech as a fellow of their Pharmaceutical Industry Management training program.

Congrats to Dr. Max Dillenburg for successfully defending his Medicinal Chemistry Ph.D. dissertation, entitled, “Design, Synthesis, and Characterization of Nucleoside Based Probes to Evaluate the Role of Human Histidine Triad Nucleotide Binding Protein 1 in Mu Opioid Receptor and N-Methyl-D-Aspartate Receptor Cross Regulation” . Max will be looking  to apply his scientific background to career opportunities in the field of Medical Liason. 

Rick, Abhishek Kulkarni and Caitlin Lichtenfels attended the Gordon Research Conference on Cancer Nanotechnology, June 11-16, Waterville Valley, NH. They presented posters on ProCSANS, Cell based drug delivery and T-cell targeting brain cancer.

Congrats to Abhishek Kulkarni for being awarded a highly competitive Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship! The competition is stiff, with nearly 200 applicants from across the university for just 50 fellowships. Time to celebrate!

Kudos to Jiaqian Li and Yiao Wang for their recent collaborative publication with the Pomerantz Lab, “Design of Highly Fluorinated Peptides for Cell-based 19F NMR”, Bioconjugate Chemistry, 34, 8, 1477–1485 (2023).

Congratulations to Caitlin Lichtenfels for being named a 2023 recipient of the an ACS Graduate Student and Post-doctoral Award for her leadership in Diversity and Mentorship. Thanks for making the department and college proud, Caitlin! 

Congrats to Max Dillenburg and Jacob Smith for their recent review, “The Many Faces of Histidine Triad Nucleotide Binding Protein 1”, ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science, 6, 10, 1310–1322 (2023).

Kudos Jacob Smith and collaborators in the Piccirillo Lab for their recent publication, “The eIF4EBP-eIF4E axis regulates CD4+ T cell differentiation through modulation of T cell activation and metabolism”, iScience 04/2023; 26(5):106683. 

Rick and Lakmal attended the recent Keystone Meeting on Multispecific Immune Engagers, Banff, CA, Feb. 18-22, 2023. Rick presented a poster on Lipid CSANs and Cell-cell communication and gave a talk on the eradication of tumors by targeting both primary cancer cells and cancer stem cells. Multispecific engagers are on the move!

Congrats to Dr. Jake Petersburg on the publication of his long awaited study on the importance of targeting CD133 positive cancer stem cells on triple negative breast cancer tumor eradication in his paper in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics entitled, "Eradication of Heterogenous Tumors by T-cells Targeted with Combination Bispecific Chemically Self-Assembled Nanorings (CSANs)”.

A big welcome to Med. Chem. first students Kostana Ligori and Bryan Magana and Chemistry first year student Soumajit Gayen to the group!

Special Congrats to Caitlin Lichtenfels for being named one of the first Department of Medicinal Chemistry Graduate Student MVPs in honor of her amazing work building a dept. outreach program with the students and teachers of Edison High School! A wonderful way for us to give back to our local community!

Big Kudos to Dr. Yiao Wang on the publication of the first nanobased strategy for engineering Cell-Cell communications in Biomacromolecules entitled, "Engineering Biomimetic Trogocytosis with Farnesylated Chemically Self-Assembled Nanorings”. Tremendous job!

Congrats to Yiao Wang on the publication of  the review in Bioconjugate Chemistry entitled, "Manipulating Cell Fates with Protein Conjugates with Protein Conjugates". Great job getting the journal cover too!

A big welcome to first year chemistry grad student Sean Welter and med. chem. student Freddys Rodriguez to the group!

Kudos to Jacob Smith for giving an exciting great talk on his and our collaborators Dr. Romario Mattos and Prof. Luciana Jesus Costa recent work developing new eIF4E targeting proTides for the treatment of SARS-Cov-2 at the Chemical Biology Interest Group (CBIG) meeting on June 20th.

Rick was pleased to give and invited talk at the American Peptide Symposium in Whistler, British Columbia, June 12-17, entitled, "Macro-Chemical Biology: Engineering Cell-Cell Interactions and Communications."

Congrats to Brandi McKnight who was one on only six posters selected for an oral presentation and travel award at the Gordon Research Conference on Bioinspired Materials in Les Diablerets, Switzerland! Excellent job representing the group!

Rick, Brandi McKnight and Nicole Bentz attended the Gordon Research Conference on Bioinspired Materials in Les Diablerets, Switzerland, June 5-10! They each contributed posters for discussion greatly enjoyed the tremendous multi-disciplinary science presented at the conference.

Congrats to Aarya Bommidi for successfully completing is oral presentation of his honors science project for Wayzata High School. It was a pleasure to have him in the lab!

Congrats to Abhishek Kulkarni for being named a poster award winner at this years MIKIW-meeting-in-miniature!

Rick greatly enjoyed his visit to the Dept. Chemistry and Biochemistry at Purdue University, where he gave a seminar entitled, "Macro-Chemical Biology: Engineering Cell-Cell Interactions and Communication with Chemically Self-Assembled Nanorings."

Pleased to be have the group, in collaboration with Prof. Clark Chen (Neurosurgery) and Prof. David Largaespada (Pediatrics), a Masonic Cancer Center pre-R01 award ($100,000) to study and advance recent discoveries in glioblastoma.

Kudos to Nicole Bentz for being 2022 American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education Graduate Fellowship Awardee!

Way to go Yiao, now Dr. Wang, on successfully defending his PhD thesis, entitled, "Prenylated Chemically Self-Assembled Nanorings: A Versatile Platform for Macro-Chemical Biology".  Yiao now heads to BioTechne to help start an immuno-oncology division. Congrats and good luck1

Check out Ellie Mews and colleagues new pre-print on Biorxiv, "Multivalent, Bispecific αB7-H3-αCD3 Chemically Self-Assembled Nanorings Direct Potent T-cell Responses Against Medulloblastoma." CSANs work in the brain!

Check out Yiao Wang and colleagues  new pre-print on Biorxiv, "Macro-Chemical Biology: Engineering Biomimetic Trogocytosis with Farnesylated Chemically Self-Assembled Nanorings". A whole new way engineer cell-cell communications!

Welcome to Wayzata High School student, Aarya Bommidi, for the next semester. He will be conducting an honors research project with graduate student mentor Abhishek Kulkarni.

A big welcome to first years joining the lab, Jigar Sethiya (MedChem), Makayla Brzycki (Medchem), Debasmita Paul (Chem)!

First ever Wagner-Con 2021 research retreat at the Fitzgerald Manor on Lake Superior was a major success! Fantastic science, food and fun!! Thanks to all, especially Lakmal for organizing help. I think we will be back! Go to the bottom of the Lab Meeting page for more details.

Major kudos to the group for the recent NIH R01 award entitled, "Anchimerically  Activatable Dual anti-Dengue and anti-Zika Pronucleotides" for $2.9 million! A tremendous accomplishment based on a lot of hard work! Congrats!

Congrats to Max Dillenberg for being selected for a prestigious American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education Graduate Fellowship!  Great job!

Congrats to Rick who was just named the 2021 winner of the Volwiller Research Achievement Award from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. He commented, "I am very grateful for this award and its recognition of my fantastic research group's scientific accomplishments. Without the tremendous support of my departmental and collegian colleagues and mentors it would not have been possible."

Congrats to Alex Strom and Rachit Shah for a tour de force paper on the imaginative application of astronomy planet tranist analysis to enzyme kinetic analysis with fluorescent "ON" inhibitors! The work was recently published in Biochemistry. 

Delighted to welcome new first year Medicinal Chemistry Graduate student, Caitlin Lichtenfels, to the Lab!! Caitlin will be working on the use of CSANs  in Tumor Immunology.

Congrats to graduate student Yiao Wang, for leading a fantastic join project with the Distefano Group, recently published in Chemical Sciences ,  developing a broadly applicable approach with lipidated-CSANS for controlling and interrogating cell-cell interactions !

A great team effort with the Kratzke group, demonstrating that our new eIF4E antagonist chemosensitizes lung cancer cells, while suppressing malignancy related protein expression.

Delighted to collaborate with the Gestwicki Lab at UCSF on a new application of HINT1 based ProTide technology that is not dependent on nucleosides. 

Kudos to alum Dr. Aniekan Okon for his being awarded an NIH F32 Post-doctoral Fellowship to carry out his studies in the Raines Lab in the Dept. Chemistry at MIT!!

Congrats to the newly minted Dr. Alex Strom for successfully defending his PhD thesis entitled, "Studies of Histidine Nucleotide Binding Protein Binding and Catalysis”! Alex is off to John Hopkins University for a post-doctoral in the laboratory of  Prof. Jungsan Sohn in the Dept. Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry.

Kudos to chemistry undergrad, Viktor Boris for winning a UROP fellowship and giving a bang up poster presentation of his work at the virtual 2020 Undergraduate Research Symposium. You an catch it here.

Congrats to the newly minted MD/PhD, Cliff Csizmar on the publication of his methods paper in Methods of Enzymology on Chemical Tools for Imaging, Manipulating, and Tracking Biological Systems entitled, "Engineering reversible cell-cell interactions with chemical biology" Wonderful job!

Congrats to Aniekan Okon (now at MIT in Ron Raines lab as a post-doctoral) for his contributions to our recent collaborative paper with the Valen group in Cell Reports entitled, "Profiling of Small Ribosomal Subunits Reveals Modes and Regulation of Translation Initiation." Nice demonstration of the usefulness of selective eIF4E probes!

Welcome to new medicinal chemistry graduate student members of the Wagner Group, Brandi McKnight and Jacob Smith!!

Kudos to the Milligan group on our collaborative publication in Brain Behavior and Immunology entitled, "The LFA-1 antagonist BIRT377 reverses neuropathic pain in prenatal alcohol-exposed female rats via actions on peripheral and central neuroimmune function in discrete pain-relevant tissue regions." A new target for pain!

Rick was very pleased to receive the 2020 University of Minnesota Award for Outstanding Contributions to Graduate and Professional Education and title Univeristy Distinguished Teaching Professor. This is a testament to the wonderful graduate students he has had the delight to mentor over the last 28 years at Minnesota and his passion for graduate education!

Congrats to Aniekan Okon (now at MIT in Ron Raines lab as a post-doctoral) for his contributions to our recent collaborative paper with the Kratze Group in Cancer Chemotherapy and Pharmacology entitled, "Repression of oncogenic cap-mediated translation by 4Ei-10 diminishes proliferation, enhances chemosensitivity and alters expression of malignancy-related proteins in mesothelioma." Good probes are so important!

Kudos to Alex Strom for his recent paper in Febs Letters, entitled Histidine triad nucleotide-binding proteins HINT1 and HINT2 share similar substrate specificities and little affinity for the signaling dinucleotide Ap4A." Great job!

Congrats to the Wagner Group for being awarded a $2.8 million grant from the National Cancer Institute, entitled "Targeting Primary Tumor and Cancer Stem Cells with Chemically Self-Assembled Nanoring Based Immunotherapy"! The grant received a 1% score! Congrats to all! 

Rick was pleased to represent Medicinal Chemistry as a Member-at-Large for the Division of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the AAAS in Seattle, WA, Feb. 13-15, 2020.

Welcome to Abhishek Kulkarni to the Wagner Group,  as a new first year medicinal chemistry graduate student!

Rick was delighted to visit the Center for Macromolecular Biochemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, Lodz, Poland and give a lecture on "The Many Faces of HINT1: From Antiviral Pronucleotides to a New Target for Pain". Wonderful new friends and fantastic hospitality!

Rick attended the 5th International Symposium on Multivalencey in Chemistry and Biology at Freie University, Berlin. Sept.30-Oct.2, 2019 and presented results from the labs studies on targeting T-cells with multivalent nanorings.

Congrats !!! to Rachit, Alex and Max and our collaborators in the Dept. Neuroscience on the publication of new probes for teasing apart the role of HINT1 in opioid tolerance and NMDAR activation.  “Inhibition of Hint1 Modulates Spinal Nociception and NMDA Evoked Behavior in Mice”, ACS Chem. Neuroscience, 10.1021/acschemneuro.9b00432, ASAP (2019)

A big hand and congrats to Trent West for successfully defending the first materials research based Ph.D. Dissertation from the lab, entitled, “Self-assembling phosphoramidate pronucleotides: enzymatic regulation and application towards therapeutic delivery”. Way to go!!

Congrats to first year graduate student Nicole Bentz for passing her Graduate Written Exam!! Hooray!!! 

Kudos to Trent West on the publication of two papers he has co-authored on a new approach to addressing pain by targeting LFA-1 on T-cells in collaboration with the Milligan group at the University of New Mexico!

“Targeting the β2-integrin LFA-1, reduces adverse neuroimmune actions in neuropathic susceptibility caused by prenatal alcohol exposure”, Acta Neuropathology Commun. 7(1):54. doi: 10.1186/s40478-019-0701-y, (2019).

"LFA-1 antagonist (BIRT377) similarly reverses peripheral neuropathic pain in male and female mice with underlying sex divergent peripheral immune proinflammatory phenotypes, Neuroimmunology Neuroinflammation; 6:10 DOI: 10.20517/2347-8659.2019.18 9 (2019).

Great to have Hyeong Joo Cho (Bryan) a second year PharmD student carry out research this summer with graduate student Ellie Mews!

A big welcome to Viktor Boris, and new Minnetonka graduate, who will be conducting research with Alex Strom this summer before becoming a Gopher Chem major this Fall.

Rick attended the Gordon Research Conf. on Cancer Nanotechnology, Mount Snow, VT, July 23-28, 2019, where he presented a poster entitled, "Target T-cells to Tumor Initiating Cancer Stem Cells with Chemically Stem Assembled Nanorings".

Many Kudos to MD/PhD Student Cliff Csizmar on being awarded the J. Jacob Kaplan Award from the Medical School in recognition for outstanding achievement in research by a medical student! Way to go Cliff!!

Wonderful news! Congratulations to former graduate student, Professor Sanaa Bardaweel for being awarded the University of Jordan's Samia Mango Award for distinguished female researchers in the fields of basic and health sciences and her promotion to Full Professor! Very proud !!

Rick was excited to present a talk on the labs collaborative research with the Fairbanks and Wilcox groups characterizing HINT1s role in regulation of NMDAR the American Pain Society Annual Meeting at Milwaukee, WI, April 3-4, 2019. 

Rick presented recent results from the lab on the erradication of targeting triple negative breast cancer primary cancer and cancer cells by anti-CD133/anti-CD3 and anti-EpCAM/anti-CD3 PAR-T cells at the GRC on Cancer Stem Cells, Ventura, CA, March 24-29, 2019.

Rick was excited to present a talk entitled, "HINT1: From HCV Drug Activator to Potential New Target for Pain" at the 52nd Winter Brain Research Conference at Snowmass, CO, Feb. 28-31! Good skiing too!

Kudos to Cliff Csizmar and Jake Petersburg on the publication of there publication, "Multivalent Ligand Binding to Cell Membrane Antigens: Defining the Interplay of Affinity, Valency, and Expression Density' in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, 141, 251-261 (2019)  

A big welcome to first year medicinal chemistry student, Nicole Bentz, who joined the group! 

Congratulations to Cliff Csizmar, Jake Petersburg, Tom Perry and Dr. Lakmal Rozumalski on there recent paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, outlining for the first time a quantitative assessment of nanoparticle polyvalent interactions with cells both in vitro and in vivo! Tour de Force!

Welcome to Dr. Justine Delgado, our new NIH Training Grant in Lung Science Post-doctoral Fellow!

Rick gave and invited talk at the annual, CT3N Symposium at the University of Pennsylvania, on Oct. 6th, on designing protein based nanostructures guiding cell-cell interactions.

Kudos to past post-doctoral, Dr. Matt Cuellar, on the publication of the recent imaging paper for T-cells in vivo with a new PET probe!

Rick attended and presented a lecture on the power of engineered bispecific protein nanorings to eradicate tumors at the 2019 AiChE annual meeting in Pittsburg, PA, October 28-November 2.

Rick has a great time reconnecting with old friends and presenting the labs work on HINT1 as a target for pain at the XXIII International Roundtable on Nucleosides, Nucleotides and Nucleic Acids hosted by the University of California, San Diego, La Jolla CA, August 26-30, 2018. See you in Stockholm in two years!

Rick had a great time at the 256th ACS meeting where he participated in a symposium addressing drugging the un-druggable. His talk was entitled, "Using the Power of Protein Based Nanotechnology to Target Cancer."

Congrats to Aniekan Okon for a great job defending his PhD Thesis, entitled, "Development of Chemical Probes for Intracellular Nucleotide Delivery, Profiling of the Metabolic Fate(s) of Nucleoside Monoester Phosphoramidates and a Nucleotide Mimetic Inhibitor of eIF4E"! Aniekan is off to MIT for a Post-doctoral in the Lab of Ron Raines in the Dept. of Chemistry. Best of luck! 

Congrats to Cliff Csizmar for doing and outstanding job defending his PhD Thesis, entitled, "From Ligands to Scaffolds to Cells: Engineered Proteins for Studying and Controlling Cellular Recognition"! Now he has completed his PhD, Cliff returns to medical school to complete his MD. Good luck!

Rick enjoyed attending the recent Biooganic Chemistry Gordon Conf. in Andover, NH, June 10-15. He presented work on the potential of HINT1 as a new target for pain.

Kudos to Cliff Csizmar and Jake Petersburg on their cool review on the non-genetic engineering of cell-cell interactions using chemical biology! “Programming Cell-Cell Interactions Through Non-Genetic Membrane Engineering”, Cell Chemical Biology, ASAP (2018) 

Welcome to med student Nathaniel Klair, who will be spending the summer carrying out protein design research with Lakmal!

Welcome to David Wang! David has joined the lab as an undergraduate researcher and won a UROP award to contact research through the summer!

Congrats to Jake Petersburg of the publication of his seminal paper on the erradication of solid tumors by T-cells modified with bispecific Prosthetic Antigen Receports! A real tour de force! “Eradication of Established Tumors by Chemically Self-Assembled Nanoring (CSAN) Labelled T-Cells”, ACS Nano, ASAP (2018).

Way to go Trent! Congrats on the publication of the labs first materials science paper detailing is studies of a new nanofiber material that may be useful for cell and drug delivery!  "Tunable Supramolecular Assemblies from Amphiphilic Nucleoside Phosphoramidate Nanofibers by Enzyme Activation”, Biomacromolecules, ASAP (2018)

Congrats to Rachit Shah and Kim Maize on their investigation of the effect of mutants of HINT1 found to be associated with Inherited Peripheral Neuropathy on enzyme catalysis and structure! A great collaboration with the Finzel Lab!  “Structure and Functional Characterization of Human Histidine Triad Nucleotide Binding Protein 1 Mutations Associated with Inherited Axonal Neuropathy with Neuromyotonia”, Journal of Molecular Biology, ASAP (2018)

Kudos to Cliff Csizmar on the publication with Jake Petersburg of his new approach for controlling cell-cell interactions, “Engineering reversible cell-cell interactions with lipid anchored prosthetic receptors”, Bioconjugate Chemistry, 18, 1291-1301 (2018)

Rick had a great time at PEGS Boston, April 30-May 4 and enjoyed giving a talk on T-cell tumor targeting with Prosthetic Antigen Receptors.

Rick was pleased to attend the ACS meeting New Orleans, March 18-22 with Trent West and Cliff Csizmar. Trent gave a great talk on the design of nanofibers and enzyme activated supramolecular assembly and Cliff gave a great talk on the control of cell-cell interactions with lipid-Prosthetic Antigen Receptors. Rick also spoke at the meeting on T-cell targeted immunotherapy with bispecific chemically self-assembled nanorings.

Congrats to Aniekan Okon on the publication of our collaborative work with the Yang group on the relationship of p53 and cap-dependent translation! “Induction of the p53 tumor suppressor in cancer cells through inhibition of cap-dependent translation”, Molecular & Cellular Biology, 38, 10, e00367-17 (2018)

Many kudos to Jacob Petersburg for successfully defending his PhD Dissertation entitled, "Prosthetic Antigen Receptors as a Platform for Solid Tumor Immunotherapy". Fantastic job!

Congrats to MD/PhD student, Cliff Csizmar for being one of five oral presentations out of 109 contributed to receive the 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineering Presentation Awards. Cliff spoke on his exciting research engineering cell-cell interactions with synthetic prosthetic receptors.

Congrats to Rachit and Andrew on the publication of their novel fluorescent on probes of HINT1. One of the few examples of a growing number of such probes in enzymology. "Switch-on Fluorescent/FRET Probes to Study Human Histidine Triad Nucleotide Binding Protein 1 (hHint1), a Novel Target for Opioid Tolerance and Neuropathic Pain", Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry, (2017) DOI: 10.1039/C7OB02472J

Bon voyage to Rachit Shah! After completing his PhD, he is off to Prof. Amit Choudhary's cutting edge CrispR lab at Harvard University as a Post-doctoral and Broad Institute Fellow!

Great job, Kim, Rachit, Alex, Sid and Andrew! A complete structural map of the HINT1 protein substrate specificity. Critical information for future antiviral and anticancer ProTide design. "A Crystal Structure-Based Guide to the Design of Human Histidine Triad Nucleotide Binding Protein 1 (hHint1) Activated ProTides", Molecular Pharmaceutics, ASAP (2017)

Rick was delighted to visit the University of New Mexico, Chemistry Dept., College of Pharmacy and Medical School on Sept. 21-22 where he gave a lecture on "Engineering Cell-Cell Interactions through Chemical Biology".

Kudos to Aniekan Okon on the publication of this application of a new ProTide approach for targeting cap-dependent translation in cancer resulting in chemosensitization! "Anchimerically Activated ProTides as Inhibitors of Cap-dependent Translation and Inducers of Chemosensitization in Mantle Cell Lymphoma”, Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, ASAP (2017) 

Special congratulations to Rachit Shah for successfully defending his PhD Thesis entitled, "A New Target for Pain: Development of Tools to Study Human Histidine Nucleotide Binding Proteins"! A real tour de force!

Congrats to Aniekan Okon on the publication of a new ProTide approach that depends on just one enzymatic activation step! “Anchimerically Activated Antiviral ProTides”, ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters, ASAP (2017) 

Kudos to Rachit Shah for his recent publication demonstrating the sensitivity of HINT1 to metal ion inhibition and self reactive denaturation by copper! "Inhibition by Divalent Metal Ions of Human Histidine Triad Nucleotide Binding Protein1 (hHint1), a Regulator of Opioid Analgesia and Neuropathic Pain", Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, 491, 760-766 (2017).

Rick attended and presented Trent's results on a new Nucleotide-Gelator approach for the assembly of supermolecular nanofibres at the GRC on Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering, July  23-28, 2017 at Holderness, NH. 

Congrats to Rachit Shah and Kim Maize on the publication of the first detailed structural analyiss of HINT1 catalysis! "Caught Before Released: Mapping the Reaction Trajectory for the Sofosbuvir Activating Enzyme, Human Histidine Triad Nucleotide Binding Protein 1 (hHint1)" Biochemistry, 56, 3559-3570 (2017) 

A Minnesota welcome to Tsinghua University Visiting student, Trevor Tu!

Congrats to Ellie Mews on passing her Preliminary Oral Exam!

Despite a number of travel hazards both coming and going, Jake was able to present his research results on the development of anti-tumor PAR T-cells at this years Antibody & Protein Therapeutics Summit in Baltimore, MD !

Rick had a great time at the 2017 Gordon Conference on Bioorganic Chemistry, where he spoke on the topic,"Chemical Self-Assembled Nanorings: From PARS to CARS."

Kudos to Cliff Czismar and Trent West on being chosen to attend and present their research at the inaugural Gordon Research Conference Graduate Symposium on Bioorganic Chemistry!

Congrats to Cliff Czismar and Lawrence Stern (Hackel Lab) on the publication of a new method for Yeast Display Affinity Maturation! "Titratable Avidity Reduction Enhances Affinity Discrimination in Mammalian Cellular Selections of Yeast-Displayed Ligands”, ACS Combinatorial Science 19, 315-323 (2017).

Kudos to Ozgun Kilic and Jake Petersburg for presenting posters on their research and attending the 2017 PEGS Conference in Boston!

Good luck to Dr. Lakmal Kotelawala as he begins a new opportunity!

Good luck to Res. Assistant Professor Sid Kumarapperuma as he takes on new responsibilities as a Senior Scientist/Research Assistant Professor in the UT Health Sciences Research Imaging Institute at the University of Texas, San Antonio!

Kudos to Jake Petersburg for his excellent talk on Prosthetic Antigen Receptors at the 2017 MIKI meeting at the University of Iowa!

Congrats fo Alex Strom for being named a 2017 American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education Fellow!

Good luck to our fantastic undergrads, Alex Hendricks, Andrew Zhou and Cher-Ling Ting, who are headed, respectively, to Phd graduate programs in Chemistry at Colorado State, Pharmaceutics and Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics at the University of Minnesota! What a great group, these grad programs are very fortunate!

A big welcome to Max Dillenburg, our new first year graduate student!

Kudos to Rachit Shah, Alexander Strom, Andrew Zhou and collaborators Kimberly M. Maize and Barry C. Finzel on their publication of their paper entitled, "Design, Synthesis, and Characterization of Sulfamide and Sulfamate Nucleotidomimetic Inhibitors of hHint1", in ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters, ASAP (2016).

Rick attended the Gordon Conference on Bioorganic Chemistry, June 5-9, 2016 at Andover, NH. He presented a poster on new tools for interrogating HINT1 as a new target for pain.

Congrats to Jialin Liu as she leaves for the University of Illinois in Chicago to join the Doctoral Program in Medicinal Chemistry! Good luck and see you at future MIKI meetings!

Kudos to Cher-Ting for being awarded a UROP Fellowship for the summer. She will be working with Alex Strom on the characterization of mutants of HINTs.

Congrats to Cliff Csizmar for not only passing is orals, but also being awarded a prestigious three year NIH Pre-doctoral Graduate Fellowship.

Congrats to Jing Jing Shen for the successful defense of her doctoral thesis entitled, "Self-Assembled Antibody Nanorings as Prosthetic Antigen Receptors for Redirecting T Cells against Tumor Cells and as Platform for Delivery of Vaccine Adjuvants for Cancer Immunotherapy"! Jing Jing is off to her new job as a Scientist at Abbvie Research Labs in Worchester, MA. Great job!

Kudos to Rachit Shah for being selected to give an oral presentation on his work on Hints as a target for pain at the 54th MIKI Meeting, April 8-10, 2016, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA.

Congrats to Rachit Shah, Jake Peterburg and Sid Kumarapperuma on the publication entitled, "In Vivo Evaluation of Site-Specifically PEGylated Chemically Self-Assembled Protein Nanostructures”, Molecular Pharmaceutics, (2016) (ASAP) doi: 10.1021/acs.molpharmaceut.6b00110. This paper describes the first in vivo analysis of the targeting ability and stability of CSANs.

Congrats to Ellie Hofer on her award of a prestigious three year NSF Pre-doctoral fellowship! Way to go!

Congrats to Sid Kumarapperuma who presented a poster entitled, "In vivo Tracking of Adoptively Transferred T cells by MRI", at the Keystone Meeting on Antibodies as Drugs, March 6-10, 2016, Whistler, BC, Canada

Kudos to Jake Petersburg for being named one of eight student speakers and given a travel award to the Keystone Meeting on Antibodies as Drugs, March 6-10, 2016, Whistler, BC, Canada. Jake gave a great talk entitled, "Utilizing Prosthetic Antigen Receptors (PARs) for Anti-EpCAM Cell-directed Immunotherapy".

Welcome to Ellie Hofer as a new first year graduate student to the Wagner Group!

Rick and Dr. George Wilcox (Pharmacology) were pleased to learn that they are one of five awardees for the the Wallin Neuroscience Research Award for their project, "Effect of Novel Small Molecule Inhibitors of HINT1 Protein

on Spinal Neuroplasticity". The award is for $100,000 and will be used to explore a new mechanism for the treatment of chronic pain.

Congratulations to Aniekan Okon on the publication of his paper entitled, "Transforming Growth Factor-beta1 Induced Epithelial Mesenchymal Transition Is Blocked By A Chemical Antagonist Of Translation Factor EIF4E" in Scientific Reports, 5, 18233 (2015) doi:10.1038/srep18233 !

Congrats to Rick and Sid for being awarded a $200,000 AHC Faculty Research Grant to develop methods of monitoring by MRI T-cells by labeling them with iron nanoparticles.

Rick was pleased to be invited to give a talk entitled, "Meeting the Challenges of Adoptive Cell Immunotherapy: From CARS to PARS" at the Second Annual Sanofi Cancer Therapy Conference in Cambridge, MA, October 15-16.

Rick visited the Gunderson Cancer Center (LaCrosse, MN) on Sept. 17 and gave a research CE talk on new concepts in cancer immunotherapy.

Rick visited Biotechne, Inc (Minneapolis, MN) on Sept. 4 and gave a talk on new concepts in cancer immunotherapy.

Kudos to the group for receiving a grant from Tychon Bioscience, LLC for $700,000 to carry out the preclinical development of prosthetic antigen receptors as anticancer agents!

Congratulations to Jingjing Shen on the publication of her paper entitled, "Prosthetic Antigen Receptors", in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, 137, 10108-10111 (2015) !!

Rick had the honor of being the Theme Chair for the 250th ACS meeting in Boston, Ma, August 16-20 on "Innovation: From Discovery to Application". He and his selected session chairs organized six symposia on the role of chemistry in innovation in medicine, synthesis, new materials and history. He was particularly pleased with the innovative Chemical Innovation and Design or "CID" talks! Thanks to great chairs and wonderful speakers!

Rick attended the Bioorganic Chemistry Gordon Conf. from June 7-12 at Proctor Academy, NH and presented a poster entitled, "Deploying CSANs as Prosthetic Antigen Receptors".

Welcome to chemistry undergraduate researcher Jialin Liu! She will be mentored by Jingjing Shen.

Congrats to Erik Larsen for making the NCAA Diving Championships! The first member of the Wagner Group to be in a NCAA Championship! Research has its benefits! 

Kudos to Aniekan Okon for winning a best poster award at the Gordon Research Conference on "Translational Machinery and Health", Feb. 22-27, 2015, Ventura, CA! 

Welcome to our new first year grad students, Alex Strom and Cliff Czismar!

Congrats to Rachit Shah on the publication of his paper “HINT1 protein: A new therapeutic target to enhance opioid antinociception and block mechanical allodynia”, Neuropharmacology, 89, 412-423 (2015)!

Rick enjoyed visiting the University of Saskatoon and giving a plenary lecture at the Western Canadian Medicinal Chemistry Workshop, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada, September 26-28, 2014.

Rick was pleased to give a plenary lecture at the 3rd International Supramolecular Systems Symposium, Jilin University, Changchun, China, August 24-26, 2014. Jilin University was very impressive!

Congrats to Amit Gangar on his new position as a Scientist at Novavax, Inc.!

A big welcome to the new undergradute researchers in the lab, Eric Larsen and Andrew Zhou!

We wish all the best to Peter Huynh as he sets off for grad school at the University of Utah!

Graduate student Rachit Shah presented a poster entitled "Histidine Triad Nucleotide Binding Protein: Potential Target for the Treatment of Chronic Pain", at the recent Keystone Meeting at Keystone Co, June 15-20 on "The Brain - Adaptation & Maladaptation in Chronic Pain."

Congrats to Jake Petersburg and Trent West for passing their Oral Exams! They are now PhD candidates!

Kudos to Kari Gabrielse, Amit Gangar, Nigam Kumar, Jae Chul Lee, Adrian Fegan, Jing Jing She and Qing Li on the publication of their paper in Angew. Chemie entitled, "Reversible Re-programming of Cell-Cell Interactions."

Welcome to new first year graduate student Ozgun Kilic!

Dr. Sid Kumarappuruma presented a poster entitled, "Design and Development of anti-EGFR Chemically Self-Assembled Antibody Nanostructures (CSANs) for Targeted Drug Delivery", at the recent 2nd IBC Life Sciences meeting on "Bioconjugates: From Targets to Therapeutics", June 4-6, 2014, San Francisco, CA.

Congrats to Amit Gangar for successfully defending her masters thesis in medicinal chemistry entitled,, “Chemically Self-Assembled Antibody Nanostructures for the Delivery of Drug, DNA, Proteins and Cells.” Good luck at his new Post-doc at Boston Biomedical, Inc !

Congrats to Kari Gabrielse for successfully defending her masters thesis in medicinal chemistry entitled, "“Chemically Self-Assembled Antibody Nanorings: A Multifaceted Approach to Anti-Cancer Therapeutics Using Techniques including Drug Delivery, Bispecific Targeting, and T-cell Surface Modifications.”

At the recent 246th American Chemical Society National Meeting, Indianapolis, IN, Sept 8012, Rick organized and chaired a symposium entitled, “Antibody Drug Conjugates: From Bench to Bedside.”

The Wagner Lab has officially moved to the new spectacular Cancer/Cardiology Research building! Take a look here.

Congrats to Aniekan Okon on successfully passing his oral exam!!

A big welcome to our two newest Wagner graduate students, Harrison Trent West and Jake Petersburg! Trent is a graduate from Wake Forest University and Jake hails from St. John’s University.

Welcome to new Post-doctoral, Dr. Nigam Kumar!

Congrats on the graduation of undergraduate researcher, Peter Huynh, Danyang Chen and Lai Zhang! Peter will be continue as a research assistant, while Danyang is off to Purdue and Lai to UCLA for grad school.

Congrats to Amit Gangar for being chosen to give one of only three talks during the Dissertation Fellowshop Symposium!

Rick organized, chaired and spoke on using CSANS for directing cell-cell interactions at the Synthetic Biology Track at the Tenth FNANO-13, April 15-18, 2013.

Kudos to Amit, Kari, Sid and Peter for their well received poster presentations at the Keystone Meeting on Antibodies as Drugs, Jan. 27-Feb. 1, 2013, Vancouver, BC. Nice job!

Congrats to Shui Li for successfully defending her masters thesis in medicinal chemistry entitled, “Evaluation of Eukaryotic Initiation Factor 4E (eIF4E) Antagonist 4Ei-1 in Mammalian Breast Cancer and Lung Cancer Cells : Chemosensitizaiton with Low Cytotoxicity”

Rick spoke on the labs work on Chemically Self-Assembled Nanorings at the recent Gordon Conference on Physical Virology held at Ventura Beach, CA, January 20-24, 2013.

Best wishes to Adrian Fegan with his new employer, BSM, Inc., a fast growing industrial research consultant company.

Congrats to Amit Ganger for being awarded a University of Minnesota Dissertation Fellowship for the upcoming academic year. Only 137 awards were made to graduate students from across the entire university.

Rick is the recipient of the 2012 University of Minnesota, College of Pharmacy Excellence in Graduate Education Faculty Award. He thanks all his current and former graduate students for making this possible!

Congrats to Amit Ganger for winning a “Best Poster” Award at this years MIKI meeting at the University of Iowa.

A big welcome to Aniekan Okon (MedChem) and Jing Liu (Chem) as our two newest first year students to join the group.

Rick organized and chaired the Synthetic Biology Track and Amit Ganger presented a poster on his nucleic acid self-assembly research at the, 9th Annual Foundations of Nanoscience (FNANO12), Snowbird, UT, April 16-19, 2012.

Welcome to Lai Zhang and Shawn Zwonar as our newest undergraduate researchers to join the group.

Rick organized and chaired the Presidential Theme Symposium, “Materials as Medicines”, during the 243nd American Chemical Society National Meeting, March 25-29, 2012 in San Diego, CA.

Kudos to Adrian Fegan, Sid Kumarapperuma and Amit Ganger for giving great talks and to Matt Cuellar for presenting a poster at the 243nd American Chemical Society National Meeting, March 25-29, 2012 in San Diego, CA. They covered a variety of uses for chemically self-assembled antibody nanostructures (CSANS).

Congrats to Amit Ganger, Adrian Fegan and Sid Kumarapperuma on the publication of their paper,“Programmable Self-Assembly of Antibody-Oligonucleotide Conjugates as Small Molecule and Protein Carriers”, J. Amer. Chem. Soc., 134, 2895-2897 (2012).

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!

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.

Congratulations to Sanaa Bardaweel who successfully defended her PhD dissertation entitled "Defining the Catalytic and Kinetic Mechanism and Natural Function of the Highly Conserved Acyl-AMP Hydrolase, HINT1".  Sanaa will be returning to Jordan soon and taking up an Assistant Professor position at the University of Jordan. All the best to her and her family!

Congratulations to Qing Li and Adrian Fegan on her recent publication in the Journal of the American Chemical Society entitled, "Chemically Self-assembled Antibody Nanorings (CSANs): Design and Characterization of an Anti-CD3 IgM Biomimetic". The first example of a antibody nanorings formed by chemical dimerization with valencies greater than four with the potential to be used for imaging and drug delivery.

Kudos to Sanaa Bardaweel on her recent publication in the Journal of Molecular Biology entitled, "Probing the Impact of the EchinT C-terminal Domain on Structure and Catalysis". In collaboration with Dr. Vivian Cody, the first structure of E. coli Histidine Triad Binding Protein and the role of the C-terminus on catalysis is reported.

Congratulations to Qing Li for successfully defending her dissertation entitled, "Chemically Self-Assembled Antibody Nanorings (CSANs): Design and Characterization of an Anti-CD3 IgM Biomimetic:" Qing just completed a 5 month internship at Genentech and will be continuing her training in protein engineering at the Univ. Texas-Austin in the Dept. of Chemical Engineering on a joint project with Prof. George Georgiou and Prof. Brent Iverson.

Rick was the General Chair of the 32nd National Medicinal Chemistry Symposium, June 6-9. The meeting covered a wide range of research areas in medicinal chemistry and was well received. He is very grateful to the program chairs, college staff and terrific speakers for their outstanding effort in putting on a wonderful meeting !! Good luck to the University of Arizona

Rick is very grateful to have been named as the new Endowed Chair in Medicinal Chemistry. Read more

Congratulations to Xin Zhou on successfully defending her PhD thesis, entitled " Catalytic Mechanism of the Hamster Arylamine N-acetyltransferase 2 (NAT2) and Human Histidine Triad Nucleotide Binding Protein 1 (Hint1)" !! Xin will continue her studies as a Post-doctoral Fellow with Prof. Jin Zhang in the Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. She will be focusing primarily on the development and use of new methods of characterizing the enzymatic activity of kinases in living cells.

Congratulations to Yan Jia on successfully defending her PhD thesis, entitled "Development of Eukaryotic Initiation Factor 4E (eIF4E) Antagonists as Potential Anticancer Therapeutics" !! Yan will continue her studies as a Post-doctoral Fellow with Prof. Richard Cotter in the Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. She will be focusing primarily on the development and use of mass spectrometry to answer biological questions.

Kudos to Yan Jia on the publication of her manuscript in entitled, "Design, Synthesis and Evaluation of Analogs of Initiation Factor 4E (eIF4E) Cap Binding Antagonist Bn7-GMP," European J. Medicinal Chem., 45, 1304–1313 (2010).

Congratulations to Brain White for successfully defending his Ph. D. thesis, "Toward Therapeutic Nanoassemblies: The Design and Modeling of Protein-Protein Interactions"! Brian has a new job at HB Fuller, good luck!

Kudos to Qing Li on being awarded a student travel grant to the Keystone meeting on "Advances in Biopharmaceuticals" Jan. 8-13, 2010 at Midway, Utah, where she presented a poster, entitled "Chemically Controlled Engineering of Multivalent Antibodies."

Kudos to Jilin Cheng, Xin Zhou and Tsuifen Chou on the publication of their paper, "Identification of the Amino Acid-AZT-Phosphoramidase by Affinity T7-phage Display Selection", Bioorg. Med. Chem. Letts, 19, 6379-6381 (2009).

Congratulations to Xin Zhou on the the publication of her paper, “Probing the Catalytic Potential of the Hamster Arylamine N-Acetyltransferase 2 Catalytic Triad by Site-directed Mutagenesis of the Proximal Conserved Residue, Tyrosine 190”, FEBS Journal, 276, 6928-6941 (2009).

Dr. Carston R. Wagner and Post-doctoral Dr. Adrian Fegan were at the GEMSEC Interdisciplinary Biomaterials Workshop at Friday Harbor Marine Laboratory, San Juan Island, Washington, August 24-28, 2009.  Fegan presented an oral presentation entitled, "Chemically Controlled Nanorings for Antibody and Peptide Display" and Wagner presented an invited lecture on the "Design of Therapeutic Pronucleotides."

Congratulations to Yan Jia who was one only eight poster presenters selected to give an oral presentation at the Gordon Research Conference on Nucleosides, Nucleotides and Oligonucleotides, July 5-10, 2009 at Newport, RI.  Her presentation was entitled' "Design, Synthesis and Characterization of Novel eIF4E Antagonists."

Kudos to Qing Li who received a Pfizer Best Poster Award for her poster entitled "Chemically Controlled Anti-CD3 Antibody Nanorings," at the Gordon Research Conference on Bioorganic Chemistry, June 14-19, 2009.

Congrats to Yan Jia, Dr. Brahma Ghosh and Dr. Phalguni Ghosh on their recent publication "Non-Toxic Chemical Interdiction of the Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition by Targeting Cap-dependent Translation," ACS Chemical Biology, 4, 367-377  (2009).

Congrats to Brian and Tiff White on the birth of their new baby Amelia on June 25!

Kudos to Qing Li on the publication of her co-authored recent paper "Fluorescent tumour imaging of type I IGF receptor in vivo: comparison of antibody-conjugated quantum dots and small-molecule fluorophore," British Journal of Cancer, 101, 71-79 (2009).

The lab was selected for one of 15 Academic Health Center Seed Grants to begin the development of new approaches for the delivery of siRNA to T-cells via antibody based nanorings.

Dr. Wagner gave an invited lecture at the 237th American Chemical Society Meeting at Salt Lake City, March 22-26, 2009, entitled "Toward the Design of Therapeutic Antibody Nanorings."

Dr. Wagner organized and Chaired the Biomedical Nanotechnology Track of the Foundations of Self-Assembly and Nanotechnology Meeting, Snowbird, Utah, April 20-24, 2009.

Kudos to Dr. Tsuifen Chou, Brian White and Jonathan C.T. Carlson for their recent publication entitled, "Enzyme Nanorings", ACS Nano 2, 2519-2525 (2008).  Their paper was selected as an In Forum highlighted paper.

Congratulations to Li Liu for her recent publication entitled, "Human Arylamine N-Acetyltransferase 1: In Vitro and Intracellular Inactivation by Nitrosoarene Metabolites of Toxic and Carcinogenic Arylamines", Chemical Research & Toxicology 21, 2005-2016 (2008).

Congratulations to Brian White for his recent publication entitled, "Molecular Modeling of Geometries and Charge Distributions of Small, Drug-Like Molecules Containing Nitrogen Heterocycles and Exocyclic Amino Groups in the Gas Phase and Aqueous Solution" in Journal of Chemical Theory & Computation 4,1718 (2008) and for being selected as the issue cover!

Rick, Li Liu and Xin Zhou attended the 28th Mid-West Enzyme Meeting at the University of Chicago on October 4, 2008. Rick presented a lecture entitled, ""Histidine Triad Nucleotide Binding Proteins (Hints) Hydrolyze tRNA Synthetase Generated Acyl-Adenylate", Xin presented a poster entitled, "Modulation of Hamster Arylamine N-Acetyl Transferase 2 Catalysis and Active Site Organization by the Conserved Residue, Tyrosine 190" and Li presented a poster entitled, "Self-Catalyzed Inactivation of Human Arylamine N-Acetyltransferases in the Presence of N-Arylhydroxamic Acids".

Rick Wagner visited Taiwan and China July 23-Aug 4, 2008 and gave invited lectures at the Mini-Symposium on Hot Topics in Medicinal Chemistry at National Taiwan University, Taipei, the International Symposium for Chinese Medicinal Chemists, Shanghai and as a seminar speaker in the Dept. Pharmaceutical Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hongzhou. He had a great time!

Lab awarded new $1.2 million R01 Grant from the NIH entitled, "Self-Assembling Immunotherapeutic Nanorings". The grant will fund research aimed at the development of anti-CD19 nanorings for the imaging and treatment of B-cell leukemias.

Xin Zhou recently attended the Gordon Research Conference on Enzymes, Coenzymes and Metabolic Pathways at the University of New England in Maine, July 13-18. She presented a poster entitled, "Assessing the Role of Tyrosine 190 in the Catalytic Mechanism and Protein Degradation Pathway of Hamster N-Acetyltransferase 2."

Rick and Qing Li were invited to attend the Genetically Engineered Materials Science & Engineering Center Annual Workshop, University of Washington, Friday Laboratory, San Juan Island, Washington, September 10-13, 2008. Rick presented a lecture entitled, "Protein Nanostructures by Chemical Self-Assembly" and Qing presented a poster entitled, "Chemically Controlled Antibody Self-Assembly".

Congratulations to Qing Li for being selected to give a talk entitled, "Chemically Controlled Assembly Antibody Nanorings" at the 236th ACS meeting in Philadelphia, PA, Sept. 10-14, 2008 and  being awarded a travel award by the Local ACS Section.

Congratulations to Yan Jia for being awarded a ACS Medicinal Chemistry Division travel award by to present her poster entitled, "Toward the Design of Cell-Permeable Cap-dependent Translation Inhibitors" at the 236th ACS meeting in Philadelphia, PA, Sept. 10-14, 2008.

Kudos to Phalguni Ghosh, Jilin Cheng, Tsuifen Chou and Yan Jia on the recent publication of their paper in Protein Expression & Purification entitled, "Expression, Purification and Characterization of Recombinant Mouse Translation Initiation Factor eIF4E as a Dihydrofolate Reductase (DHFR) Fusion Protein."

Congrats to Leila Datoo for completing the defense of her MS Thesis entitled, "Design, Synthesis and Characterization of Antibacterial Pronucleotides of AZT". Leila is now employed at Abbott Labs in Chicago.

Congratulations to Leila Datoo for being awarded third place in the graduate division for excellence in chemical sciences at the MRSEC-SURE/Younger Chemists Committee Summer Research Symposium that was held on August 9, 2007!

Lab awarded $1.25 million NIH R01 Grant entitled, "Chemically Controlled Assembly of Therapeutic Protein Nanostructures". The award will fund research in the design and study of antibody-nanorings and their application to the imaging and treatment of B-cell leukemias.

Rick Wagner, Xin Zhou and Brian White attended the 234th ACS National Meeting in Boston, MA, August 19-23, 2007. Rick presented a lecture entitled, "Chemical Self-Assembly of Protein Nanostructures". Xin presented a poster on her mutant studies of the mechanism of action of arylamine N-acetyltransferase and Brian presented a poster on the development and validation of force fields by comparison to DFT calculations for the modeling of the drug, methotrexate.

Congrats to Sanaa Bardaweel and her family on the birth of her son, Yamen!

Congratulations to Leila Datoo for being awarded third place in the graduate division for excellence in chemical sciences at the MRSEC-SURE/Younger Chemists Committee Summer Research Symposium that was held on August 9, 2007!

Brahma Ghosh and Cindy Chou presented a poster entitled, "Design and Synthesis of Novel Antagonists of eIF4E" at the National Organic Symposium-2007, Duke University, NC, June 3-7, 2007.

Congratulations to Mike DeMeuse for being awarded a UROP scholarship and the Undergraduate Chemistry Research award in recognition of his excellent undergraduate research. Good Job!

Congratulations to Chen Xing for passing his Chemistry Oral Preliminary Exam! He is now an official Chemistry PhD candidate!

Kudos to Dr. Tsui-fen Chou, Xin Zhou and Dr. Brahma Ghosh on the publication of their recent paper. ""Phosphoramidate Pronucleotides: A Comparison of the Phosphoramidase Substrate Specificity of Human and E. coli Histidine Triad Nucleotide Binding Proteins (Hint1)", Molecular Pharmaceutics, 4, 208-217 (2007).

Congratulations! to Tsuifen Chou on the recent publication," Lysyl-tRNA Synthetase Generated Lysyl-Adenylate is a Substrate for Histidine Triad Nucleotide Binding Proteins (Hints)", J. Biol. Chem., 282, 7, 4719-4727 (2007).