Events

Herman Sintim, PhD, Drug Discovery Professor of Chemistry, Purdue University, West Lafayette. Recorded Oct. 21, 2021.

Herman Sintim studied medicinal chemistry at University College London (BSc), Organic Chemistry (DPhil) at the University of Oxford and performed postdoctoral work in organic chemistry and chemical biology at Oxford and Stanford Universities respectively. He currently serves on the editorial advisory board of ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters and as a Program Director at the National Science Foundation, Chemistry Division. Herman is a co-founder of KinaRx Inc., a start-up focused on developing novel agents against protein kinases, especially secondary mutated kinases that drive relapse in blood cancers.

The Discovery Series, launched in 2013, brings eminent scientists, thought leaders and innovators from around the world to the Biodesign Institute to share their research expertise. Discovery Series lectures and interactive discussions which follow exposes our faculty, staff and students to the latest developments in science, technology and medicine, keeping Biodesign researchers abreast of current trends and breakthroughs.

The Biodesign Institute at ASU delivers the future of nature-inspired scientific innovation today for the betterment of human health, community safety and global sustainability.

Karen Szumlinski, PhD, Professor, Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology & Neuroscience Research Insitute at University of California, Santa Barbara. Recorded April 20, 2022.

Substance use disorder is a chronic, relapsing, neuropsychiatric condition that affects 2% of the world’s population. Substance use disorder is the leading risk factor of premature death globally. In addition to the deaths directly attributed to drug over-dose or fatal accidents, substance use increases the risk for many types of cancers, in addition to cardiovascular, metabolic, renal, and hepatic diseases, neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders, various neuropsychiatric conditions and suicide, accounting for 3-5% of the disease burden in many Western countries.

The work to be discussed in this talk seeks to identify the environmental, genetic, age- and sex-related determinants of alcohol, opioid, and psychostimulant use vulnerability, as well as their co-morbidity with affective, neurocognitive and eating disorders. Using rodent models, we have distinguished between the neurobiological impact of various addictive substances of relevance to the design of substance-specific therapy. We are exploring and validating the therapeutic potential of drugs already approved by the FDA for other uses for neuroimmune modulation as an approach to reduce drug-taking and craving.

The Discovery Series, launched in 2013, brings eminent scientists, thought leaders and innovators from around the world to the Biodesign Institute to share their research expertise. Discovery Series lectures and interactive discussions which follow exposes our faculty, staff and students to the latest developments in science, technology and medicine, keeping Biodesign researchers abreast of current trends and breakthroughs.

The Biodesign Institute at ASU delivers the future of nature-inspired scientific innovation today for the betterment of human health, community safety and global sustainability.

Biomolecules are an important class of materials in the nanoscience community, allowing the development of precision nanoscale systems, permitting energy transfer over long distances and providing information about gene expression and cell regulation. These properties make biomolecules an ideal target for sensor applications.

In this talk, Joshua Hihath will discuss the strategy for advancing such bioelectronic systems. Specifically, he will review the development of a novel spectroscopic system that allows simultaneous characterization of the electrical, optical and mechanical properties of a single-molecule by combining its electronic measurements with single-molecule Raman spectroscopy permitting identification of COVID variants.

The Discovery Series, launched in 2013, brings eminent scientists, thought leaders and innovators from around the world to the Biodesign Institute to share their research expertise. Discovery Series lectures and interactive discussions which follow exposes our faculty, staff and students to the latest developments in science, technology and medicine, keeping Biodesign researchers abreast of current trends and breakthroughs.

The Biodesign Institute at ASU delivers the future of nature-inspired scientific innovation today for the betterment of human health, community safety and global sustainability.