There are nine winning projects this year. Read about three of them here or click<\/a> to learn about all nine.<\/p>\n Liver damage can sometimes be irreversible. Whether it\u2019s caused by an alcohol dependency or an overdose of common drugs like acetaminophen, the outcome is the same\u2014the organ is in such dire shape that it can\u2019t repair itself quickly enough to save a dying patient. Valerie Gouon-Evans<\/a>, associate professor of medicine\/gastroenterology, and Arturo Vegas<\/a>, a CAS assistant professor of chemistry, are speeding up that rehabilitation process using a new type of nanoparticle. It\u2019s made of a polymer sphere with a strand of messenger RNA nestled inside it. The sphere can home in on liver cells, enter their cell membrane, and release its payload of RNA\u2014which then instructs the cell to make a regenerative molecule that helps it repair damage. \u201cIt actually works in a similar way to major COVID vaccines, but instead of giving instructions to your immune system, it\u2019s instructing liver cells,\u201d says Gouon-Evans. If this sort of treatment is given to patients early enough, she thinks it might help save the lives of people with acute liver injury. Gouon-Evans and Vegas are currently working to make the technology more robust, and plan to introduce it to drug companies in the near future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Congratulations to Associate Professor Steven Borkan, MD, Assistant Professor Daniel Cifuentes, PhD, and Associate Professor Valerie Gouon-Evans, PhD, PharmD.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[146,91,143,90],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105056"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105056"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105071,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105056\/revisions\/105071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Biotech<\/h2>\n
Stopping Kidney Failure<\/h3>\n
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Kidney injury comes in many forms. Some damage takes years to develop; some occurs over a few days or even hours. In the latter case, blood flow to the kidneys is often disrupted, starving the organ of oxygen and nutrients, which kills its cells. Steven Borkan<\/a>, associate professor of medicine\/nephrology, has discovered a new signal that triggers this cell death, and has worked out a way to stop it in its tracks. The signal works using two proteins that exist within kidney cells: one called Bax, and another called nucleophosmin. Normally, they\u2019re separate, harmless molecules\u2014but when they bind together, the resulting complex kills the cell. Borkan has developed a molecule that prevents the two proteins from binding in the first place, stopping the cell death signal from being created. So far, it\u2019s been used successfully in lab mice, saving their kidneys from an early demise and preventing the animal from dying of kidney failure. Borkan is currently working to improve his molecule\u2019s efficacy, and has begun the process of turning it into a drug that can be tested in humans at high risk of acute kidney injury.<\/p>\nProbing RNA-Binding Proteins<\/h3>\n
![\"Headshot](\"\/camed\/files\/2015\/10\/Daniel-Cifuentes-1.jpg\")
Huge numbers of diseases, from neurological ailments to some forms of cancer, are caused by faulty regulation of RNA, the molecule that carries information to make new proteins in the body. If a second protein latches onto that RNA in the wrong place or at the wrong time, the information within the strand can\u2019t be correctly read by the body, resulting in a deformed version of the protein that the RNA set out to create. In order to treat these sorts of ailments, researchers must find a specific stretch of the RNA where a drug might attach and correct the instructions it contains. Daniel Cifuentes<\/a>, assistant professor of biochemistry, is aiding this process by developing a new means to evaluate where and how strongly a protein attaches to RNA. Cifuentes\u2019 new technology can decipher both the exact spot where a protein attaches to an RNA strand and how strong that attachment may be. \u201cIt used to take days to develop an assay to see if binding occurred on RNA, and even then, we didn\u2019t know how robust that binding was,\u201d says Cifuentes. \u201cOur technology lets us test all of that at the same time in living cells, so researchers can more quickly develop drugs that target those spots.\u201d<\/p>\nDelivering RNA with Nanoparticles<\/h3>\n
![\"Headshot](\"\/camed\/files\/2018\/10\/Valerie-Gouon-Evans-2.jpg\")