Review the posters by expanding the research areas below. Remember to interact with student authors by submitting a question. You?ll need the student?s name and poster number to submit.
Poster #1006, Karyn Wilson, XULA Project Pathways
Synthesis and Biological Evaluation of New Ceramide Analogs
Breast cancer is the most diagnosed form of cancer in women in the United States. It is estimated that on average, every two minutes a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer; and one woman will die of the disease every thirteen minutes. Many anti-cancer drugs used to clinically treat breast cancer mediate tumor cell death through the initiation of apoptosis. Multidrug-resistance is a major cause of cancer chemotherapy failure in clinical treatment. As a result, molecular pathways involved in tumor cell proliferation, including the ceramide signaling pathway, have become potential targets for pharmacological intervention. Ceramides have been shown to potentiate signaling events that drive apoptosis, autophagic responses, and cell cycle arrest. Ceramide analogs can be designed to inhibit ceramide-metabolizing enzymes in order to increase intra-cellular ceramide levels in cancer cells, leading to increased cell death. Our approach is to design and synthesize such ceramide analogs. Some of our synthesized analogs have been shown to have greater efficacy and specificity than endogenous ceramides. Evidence shows that multidrug-resistant cancer cells are as sensitive as corresponding regular cancer cells under the exposure to some of our anti-cancer ceramide analogs. Previously, a number of ceramide analogs with a flavone moiety on the backbone were synthesized. Initial docking studies showed that flavone moieties are too big for the binding pocket of human ceramidase. Coumarin-containing ceramide analogs, however, are smaller in size, and are expected to have increased efficiency along with self-fluorescence. For this project, new ceramide analogs containing a coumarin moiety on the sidechain were synthesized in order to study their biological activities.
Poster #1008, Gregory Hodge, XULA Project Pathways
Synthesis of generation 3-bisMPA dendrimers for nanotherapeutic drug delivery systems
Stimuli Response Polymers (SRPs) are poised to make advances in nanotherapeutic drug delivery systems. In response to chem., phys., or biol. stimuli, SRPs can control the release of a drug into a system. The free polymers perform with a polydispersity that hinders their effectiveness in drug delivery, therefore we are using the more monodisperse bis-MPA dendrimer as a core nucleation site for conjugation to these SRPs. This project involves the synthesis of nanomaterial consisting of a dendritic core, a ligand, and a stimuli response block co-polymer. The biocompatibility and monodispersity of bis-MPA dendrimers make them targets as potential drug delivery system platforms. To this end, the drug delivery potential of precisely defined materials made of stimuli response block co-polymers linked to the dendrimer core will be compared to that of free block co-polymers in soln. This research highlights the synthesis of the dendritic core. The 2,2-bis(hydroxymethyl) propionic acid, (bis-MPA) is protected with benzaldehyde di-Me acetal, and coupled with trimethylol propane (TMP), and then deprotected under acidic conditions to reveal hydroxy termini. The dendrimer core functions as an assembly site for stimuli response block co-polymers. A generation 1 dendrimer was produced and confirmed using 1H NMR and MALDI-ToF. These reactions will be repeated in order to synthesize subsequent generations of bis-MPA dendrimer, with a final goal of synthesizing a generation 3 bis-MPA dendrimer.
Poster# 1010, Luis Armenta, CSULB BUILD
Chlorine Radical Applications to Wastewater Treatment
The standard large-scale treatment of wastewater, consisting of initial, primary and secondary treatment, is not generally adequate to quantitatively remove all harmful chemical contaminants. Therefore, to allow the direct reuse of wastewaters, additional treatments, that incorporate microfiltration, reverse osmosis, and Advanced Oxidation Processes (AOP), are required. AOPs typically generate strongly oxidizing hydroxyl radicals (OH), often through UV-photolysis based processes. These powerful radicals then non-selectively degrade the contaminants. However, the efficiency of this chemistry is highly dependent upon the wastewater matrix chemicals within the AOP. For example, hypochlorite is often added to the wastewater treatment train to generate chloramines (NH Cl, NHCl , NCl ), used to minimize treatment membrane biofouling. These chloramines strongly absorb in the UV region, which therefore can significantly impact the production of hydroxyl radicals in the AOP. One mitigating factor, though, is that chloramine UV-photolysis produces reactive chlorine atoms (Cl ) that can also degrade contaminant chemicals. However, aqueous chlorine atom chemistry is not well known: the reported kinetic data is contradictory, and little product investigation has been performed. Therefore, in this study, we report on our investigations of the absolute reactivity of chlorine atoms with wastewater matrix elements and selected chemical contaminants, as well as the results of our preliminary product studies on these systems. Chlorine atoms were selectively generated through the pulsed laser UV-photolysis of [Cr(NH ) Cl](ClO ) in aqueous solution at slightly acidic pH (pH 4-6), and directly monitored using transient absorption spectroscopy. These absolute kinetic data are compared to previous literature reported values, and to the analogous rate constants obtained for hydroxyl radical and the dichlorine radical anion (Cl) reactions.
Poster #1001, Trenton Nguyen, CSULB BUILD
Monitoring Drug Loading and Releasing in MIL-88B(Fe) Films on Modified Gold Substrates using Surface
Plasmon Methods Coronary Artery disease (CAD) is a major leading cause of death in the United States. Characterized by plaque narrowing the blood vessel, people with CAD have a higher chance of experiencing heart attack and stroke. Our research studies the effects of using MIL-88B, a porous structure of the class: Metal Organic Framework (MOF) as a porous inorganic coating on drug eluting stent (DES), to prevent CAD and minimize restenosis and thrombosis effects. MIL-88B was synthesized under a solvo-thermo method and used for UV-Vis to see drug delivery properties while implementation of MIL-88B on gold was used as a model to see the binding of Ibuprofen on MIL-88B as well as the binding of 16-Mercaptohexadecanoic acid (MHDA) on gold for SPR experiments. Our results confirmed the successful preparation of ibuprofen loaded MIL-88B film on MHDA functionalized gold substrate.
Poster #1007, Kyle Williams, UTEP BUILDing SCHOLARS
The Structure of Degassed Water-Enabled Oil-in-Water Microemulsions
Most anti-cancer agents are hydrophobic and their use on patients often requires an oil & drug delivery vehicle. The drug delivery vehicle tends to be the primary cause of side effects in patients. Growing evidence suggests that it may be possible to mix oil in water at higher concentrations if dissolved gases are removed from water. Understanding the structure of oil/water microemulsions could shed light on mechanisms of mixing. This project uses light scattering and turbidity measurements to assess the structure of hydrophobic molecules mixed with degassed water/un-degassed water. Results of nanostructure as a function of alkane molecule chain length and concentration will be presented. These results will be compared to the same measurements of biocompatible fatty acids in the future. Determining the properties that enable their miscibility with an aqueous environment will be helpful for future drug delivery.
Poster #1002, David Harvey, UAF BLaST
A One Health investigation of volcanic ash from Pavlof Volcano
Volcanic ash is the most common and significant hazard posed to people, animals, and the environment by Alaskan volcanoes, but specific health-related hazards of volcanic ashfall in Alaska are under-studied. This project seeks to identify potential health hazards in volcanic ash from the March 2016 eruption of Pavlof volcano which fell on the Alaska Native village of Nelson Lagoon. A stereoscopic microscope was used to observe ash morphology and componentry. A FEI Quanta 200 environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM) with energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) was then used to determine the chemical composition of individual grains. Our preliminary findings show the sample contains altered and unaltered plagioclase crystals and vesicular volcanic glass, and a silica phase. The presence of both altered and unaltered grains indicates hydrothermal alteration of magma or conduit fill material occurred before and/or during the eruption. The silica phase warrants further study to determine if it may pose a health hazard from Pavlof ash. Prolonged exposure to respirable crystalline silica has been documented to raise the risk of silicosis and other chronic lung diseases. Future work will involve additional diagnostic methods, such as x-ray diffraction (XRD), to accurately identify the silica phase, as well as in-vitro experiments with the ash to assess inflammatory responses and toxicity in lab-cultured cells.