At one time you could wander through the labs of pharmaceutical companies and hardly ever see light being used to mediate chemical reactions. Now “photoredox catalysis” has become an essential way to synthesize novel organic compounds.

This type of chemistry may soon be used even more widely—and less expensively— thanks to University researchers.

In a paper published recently in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the labs of Todd Krauss,  professor and chair of chemistry, and Daniel Weix,  associate professor of chemistry, demonstrate for the first time how light emitting quantum dots can be used as photoredox catalysts to create carbon-carbon bonds.

Moreover, the researchers— including Jill Caputo ’16 (PhD) and Norman Zhao ’17 from Weix’s lab and Leah Frenette ’14 (MS) and Kelly Sowers ’16 (PhD) from Krauss’s group—showed that cadmium/selenium quantum dots can create these bonds just as effectively as the rare-metal catalysts now used in photoredox chemistry, such as ruthenium and iridium.

“The potential impact could be great,” says Weix. Carbon-carbon bonds are the basic building blocks for numerous molecular forms, many of them essential to biological functions.

The quantum dots have potential applications in the synthesis of pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals, and agro-chemicals. “These are markets where people are most actively searching for chemical compounds with new properties,” Weix says.

Read more here.

People with severe mental illness are more than four times more likely to be arrested than other adults and account for nearly 20 percent of today’s U.S. prison population. Behind bars, they often wait months to receive appropriate treatment, if any, studies show.

Now, an intervention born in Rochester, N.Y., has been shown for the first time to reduce the population’s criminal convictions, jail time, and hospitalizations by roughly 50 percent. Additionally, the model—which hinges on active collaboration and shared problem-solving between mental health and criminal justice systems—has proven to keep mentally ill individuals in treatment twice as long as the study’s comparison program.

The Rochester FACT prototype uses legal leverage to engage individuals in mental health treatment that systematically targets their criminogenic risk factors, such as antisocial personality, criminal thinking, social support for crime, and substance abuse

Getting judges, lawyers, probation officers, and other criminal justice professionals to “buy-in” to the program is key, Lamberti says.

“Legal leverage isn’t about making threats to force compliance, or simply reporting infractions,” says Lamberti. “It’s about the appropriate, respectful use of legal authority to guide people toward engagement. It also requires getting mental health and criminal justice professionals to problem-solve together, and to consider therapeutic alternatives to punishment.  Our clients are  men and women who feel demoralized and discouraged, they are at their very lowest point, and they need more rewards than sanctions.”

Read more here.

A new study may help to better decipher the puzzle of how pain is transferred within the teeth and surrounding tissues, and could lead to potential targets for developing more effective drugs for tooth sensitivity and dental pain.

A longstanding hydrodynamic theory states that environment stimulation triggers fluid movement in a tooth’s hard tissue, which then stimulates the tooth’s nerves in its root, causing pain.

“Our work doesn’t overthrow the traditional hydrodynamic theory, but it shifts the paradigm to a more complex mechanical-biological mechanism,” says Xiuxin Liu, assistant professor at the Eastman Institute of Oral Health and lead author of the study, which was published in the Journal of Dental Research. “By dissecting the signal pathway at the cellular and molecular level, we learned in more detail about the pain transduction mechanism within the teeth.”

IncRNAs — DNA sequences that do not encode proteins — play a role in tissue development, tumor formation, and cancer progression, but many key questions remain about their role.

Bin Zhang,  assistant professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, and a team of researchers have discovered how IncRNAs function and evolve in the genomes of green lizards. Their work is published in Cell Reports, in collaboration with scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Long Island, NY, where Zhang worked before joining the Medical Center in 2015.

One particular IncRNA—MALAT1 (Metastasis-Associated Lung Adenocarcinoma Transcript 1)—was first associated with lung cancers that were likely to spread and was later found to be over-abundant in many other tumor types. The MALAT1 gene contains a unique tail structure that stabilizes the RNA molecule.

Zhang’s team pioneered a series of computer models and algorithms allowing them to turn the tail structure into a searchable module. They discovered a class of 130 different vertebrate IncRNAs with similar structures to MALAT1, and then further conducted evolutionary studies into the activity of the IncRNAs in green lizards. The National Cancer Institute and National Institute of General Medical Sciences funded the study.

Researchers from the Center for RNA Biology have identified a new way to potentially slow the fast-growing cells that characterize all types of cancer. The findings, reported in the journal Science and funded by the National Institutes of Health, were made in kidney and cervical cancer cells in the laboratory and are a long way from being applied in people. But, they could be the basis of a treatment option in the future, the authors said.

Researchers identified a protein called Tudor-SN that is important in the “preparatory” phase of the cell cycle – the period when the cell gets ready to divide. When scientists eliminated this protein from cells, using the gene editing technology CRISPR-Cas9, cells took longer to gear up for division. The loss of Tudor-SN slowed the cell cycle.

“We know that Tudor-SN is more abundant in cancer cells than healthy cells, and our study suggests that targeting this protein could inhibit fast-growing cancer cells,” says Reyad A. Elbarbary, lead author and research assistant professor of biochemistry and biophysics.

Elbarbary, who works in the laboratory of senior author Lynne E. Maquat,  professor of biochemistry and biophysics and a world-renowned expert in RNA biology, adds that there are existing compounds that block Tudor-SN that could be good candidates for a possible therapy.

Read more here.

(This is part of a monthly series to help principal investigators understand their role in ensuring that human subject protection requirements are met in their studies.)

The National Institutes of Health Single IRB (Institutional Review Board) policy for multi-site research goes into effect September 25. This policy requires that all grant submissions with multi-site human subject research include a plan for using a single Institutional Review Board (sIRB) to review and approve the research conducted at all sites. It is imperative to plan appropriately for the added nuances this policy introduces, including (but not limited to):

• Adequate consideration of the time, effort, and resources related to implementing Reliance and/or lRB Authorization Agreements with each site.
• Including IRB review costs in the budget.
• Budget justification (see below for links to FAQs and scenarios documents).
• Oversight of non-UR research sites (e.g., site training, communications, and monitoring).

To ensure adequate budgeting, planning, and selection of a single IRB, all study teams are required to meet with Tiffany Gommel, Rochester Subjects Review Board director, and Kelley O’Donoghue, associate vice president for Human Subject Research, prior to submission of any NIH grants involving multi-site human subject research. Additional resources are as follows:

• NIH has published two sets of frequently asked questions (FAQs) related to the implementation of the policy, and to costs.
• Scenarios illustrating the use of direct and indirect costs for single IRB review under this policy are available here.
• Slides presented during two OHSP seminars on the policy and on planning for grant submissions — as well as a video recording of each presentation — are available on the OHSP website.

The winners of this year’s Three Minute Thesis competition, held by the School of Medicine and Dentistry’s Center for Professional Development, in which 34 students boiled years of grueling study into three-minute elevator talks for a general audience. Click here to see videos of the winning presentations by:

• Thuy-vy Nguyen, graduate student in the Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology, who won first place and a $750 travel award for her presentation on motivational aspects of solitude.
• Scott Friedland, graduate student in the Genetics, Development, and Stem Cells Program, who took second place and a $500 travel award for his presentation titled, “Pancreatic Cancer and the Tale of the Broken Librarian.”
• Sarah Catheline, graduate student in the Pathways of Human Disease Program, who won the $250 “People’s Choice” travel award for her presentation on osteoarthritis.

Nizhoni Chow-Garcia ‘16W (PhD), whose doctoral dissertation on “Educational Pathways for Native American Graduates: Stories through the STEM Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctoral Degrees,” has received dissertation of the year awards from the American College Personnel Association and from the NASPA (Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education) Foundation. The 270-page work, which addresses the often disconnected pathways available to Native Americans to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math, shares the stories of nine Native Americans. Read more here.

A UNYTE scientific session, “Collaborate to Innovate Maternal & Child Health Translational Research” will be held from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. July 14 at Helen Wood Hall. It will include panel presentations, a poster session, interactive break-out groups, and a keynote address by Michele Caggana, deputy director of genetics and director of newborn screening at the Wadsworth School of Laboratory Sciences.

For additional information and registration, go to UNYTE Scientific Session. Registration is free. Poster abstracts are now being accepted for presentation and must be submitted by Thursday, July 6, 2017. For information and submission, click here. Questions? Contact: UNYTE@urmc.rochester.edu.

Amy LaLonde, Statistics, “Bayesian Model-Based Clustering Methods: Procedures for Data with Unknown Numbers of Clusters.” 10 a.m., June 2, 2017. Saunders Research Building (Room 1.412). Advisor: Tanzy Love.

Kierra Huihui, Chemistry, “Nickel-Catalyzed Coupling of N-Hydroxyphthalimide Esters with Aryl Iodides and Reductive Conjugate Addition Reactions with Enones.” 2 p.m., June 8, 2017. 473 Hutchison Hall. Advisor: Daniel J. Weix.

Deepika Sharma, Genetics, “HES1 Functions Downstream of SHH in the Pathogenesis of Preaxial Polydactyly.” 2 p.m., June 26, 2017. Ryan Case Method Room (1-9576), Medical Center. Advisor: Matt Hilton.

Jennifer Judge, Toxicology, “Lactate Dehydrogenase as a Novel Therapeutic Target in Pulmonary Fibrosis.” 1 p.m., June 29, 2017. Auditorium K-307 (3-6408) Medical Center. Advisor: Patricia Sime.

June 5: “Understanding Your Microbiota: Approaches and Selected Vignettes,” a Genomics Research Center town hall seminar. A review of experimental and computational resources and analytical approaches being used for microbiota projects at the Medical Center and data from ongoing studies of infant gut and respiratory microbiota. 1 to 3 p.m. Natapow Conference Room (1-9545), Medical Center.

June 12: “So you want to publish? Tips, tools and techniques for identifying and choosing the ‘right’ publication.” 2016-2017 Faculty Development Workshop Series. 4 to 5:30 p.m., CEL 2-7544. Faculty, students, residents, fellows, and staff are welcome to attend. To register, contact Nina Koski.

June 14: First meeting of the Science, Technology, and Culture multidisciplinary reading group, discussing When Breath Becomes Air, the memoir of Paul Kalanithi — a neurosurgeon whose diagnosis with terminal lung cancer at the end of his residency drives him to examine the brain, the mind, and what makes us human.  5 p.m., Humanities Center at Rush Rhees Library. To learn more, email Emma_Grygotis@urmc.rochester.edu

July 14: UNYTE scientific session, “Collaborate to Innovate Maternal & Child Health Translational Research.” 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Helen Wood Hall. Panel presentations, a poster session, interactive break-out groups and a keynote address by Michele Caggana, deputy director of genetics and director of newborn screening at the Wadsworth School of Laboratory Sciences. For additional information and registration, go to UNYTE Scientific Session.