In The News

UArizona Biomedical Engineering professor and director of the BIO5 Institute Dr. Jennifer Barton, gives a look into a day in her life. Dr. Barton discusses her academic and professional journey, how and why she began conducting her current research, and the importance of women becoming increasingly involved in engineering and STEM fields.

Dr. Janko Nikolich-Zugich, an internationally noted immunologist, co-director of the UArizona Center on Aging at the College of Medicine - Tucson, and BIO5 member received a $4.5 million grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Using the funding from this grant, his lab will study how common infectious, psychological and physical stressors affect our immunity, lifespan and the aging processes.

Regents Professor Emeritus and UArizona CBC faculty Dr. Victor Hruby, is one of two university academics being honored as National Academy of Inventors Fellows, the highest professional distinction awarded to academic inventors. Known as a world leader in peptide research as it relates to health, disease and human behavior, Dr. Hruby holds more than 50 issued patents, and is dedicated to answering challenging research questions and then translating those discoveries to the public via intellectual property protection and commercial pathways.

The fifteen-year old daughter of UArizona researcher and BIO5 associate director Dr. Michael Hammer, had a disability of unknown origin in which she presented with epileptic seizures. It’s been over a decade since Shay has passed and Dr. Hammer spends every day in a lab at the University of Arizona studying the inner workings of the brain, trying to solve the mystery of her illness.

UArizona researcher and BIO5 associate director Dr. Michael Hammer spends every day in a lab studying the gene mutation behind the rare form of epilepsy that afflicted his late daughter Shay. Dr. Hammer studies different models with similar gene variants to understand the genetics and cell formations behind this mutation. His lab uses their findings to assess the effectiveness and reliability of different treatment options to help other children living with this disease.

UArizona Immunobiology professor Dr. Felicia Goodrum is studying Cytomegalovirus, or CMV. It is a herpes virus that is usually latent but has the ability to change into a form that causes devastating diseases or even death in immune-compromised patients. The leading cause of birth defects, Dr. Goodrum explains that discovering how the virus reactivates from its latent state could bring novel strategies to conquer it, noting studying viruses like CMV can help scientists learn why our cells become cancerous.

Dr. Barry Pryor, a UArizona plant sciences professor and BIO5 faculty member, discusses how the market demand for gourmet and medicinal mushrooms is increasing substantially as a part of a growing movement towards planting alternative crops in greenhouses. Such crops could easily become the next big thing in greenhouse gardening and could bring growers the opportunity to capitalize on new markets.

A UA program, directed by UA Department of Management Information Systems professor and BIO5 faculty Dr. Hsinchun Chen, trains the next generation of cyberspace defenders, and will continue, thanks to a $3.6 million grant renewal from the National Science Foundation. The University of Arizona's two-year program, known as the AZSecure Cybersecurity Fellowship, covers tuition and fees for graduate students and provides a stipend of $34,000 per academic year.

Scientists are midway through a four-month long experiment on drought at Biosphere 2. The study began in September, when managers closed the Biosphere's iconic rainforest biome, and will continue for another five weeks. Researchers, including UArizona environmental researcher and BIO5 member Dr. Laura Meredith, are using instruments embedded among the trees and plants to measure the impact of drought. They plan to use the information from the experiment to improve computer models that predict changes due to drought conditions around the world.

The Arizona Prevention Research Center has received a $7.5 million, five-year award from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to continue critical collaborations with community health workers and their organizations in Pima, Maricopa, Yuma, Santa Cruz and Cochise Counties. This award will benefit a cancer prevention research project led by UArizona Zuckerman College of Public Health professor, and BIO5 and UArizona Cancer Center member, Dr. Cynthia Thomson.

Dr. Matt Goode, UArizona wildlife ecologist and assistant research scientist in the university’s world-renowned Venom Immunochemistry, Pharmacology and Emergency Response (VIPER) Institute, shares what researchers know about when, where, and why snakes are scarce in the winter, and how climate might change their behavior.

Acoustoelectric cardiac imaging, a new, noninvasive cardiac imaging technology developed at the University of Arizona, has been licensed to startup ElectroSonix. Dr. Russell Witte, BIO5 faculty and Medical Imaging professor at the UArizona College of Medicine-Tucson, developed the patented technology that provides improvements over current cardiac imaging technologies such as electroanatomical mapping, which provides low-resolution images that make it difficult to pinpoint the exact location of cardiac arrhythmias.

With funds from the National Institute of Health, Dr. Nathan Cherrington, UArizona College of Pharmacy Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies and BIO5 member, has created a non-invasive diagnostic to determine if someone has Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH). NASH is a chronic liver disease that irregulates the function of the liver and affects an estimated 30 to 50 million patients, with only around 300,000 of them being properly diagnosed. Currently, the only diagnosis for NASH includes a painful liver biopsy, which can result in heavy blood loss.

UArizona researchers led by Dr. Nicholas Delamere, professor and head of the Department of Physiology at UA COM-T, are studying potential reasons behind pressure build up in the eye, that may help us understand and develop future treatments for glaucoma and other diseases.

Dr. Guy Reed, the dean of UArizona's College of Medicine - Phoenix and BIO5 member, discusses the colleges decision to increase its class size from 80 to 100 medical students. The increase comes after the Arizona Legislature approved $8 million last legislative session to fund the expanded class. This decision was necessary, as the already dire physician shortage is expected to intensify within the decade due to Arizona’s fast growing population.

Dr. Roberta Diaz Brinton, the director of the UA Center for Innovation in Brain Science whose work, alongside many other researchers, shows an association between menopause and an earlier emergence of Alzheimer’s in the female brain compared with the male brain.

An inflammatory protein may play a part against the spread of sexually transmitted genital herpes virus in the nervous system, a new study says. The findings could help lead to improved treatment of herpes, according to the researchers at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix.

A research group at the medical-device and health care giant Abbott, has discovered a new strain of human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV—the first to be identified in 19 years. Along with other researchers, BIO5 associate director and UArizona Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department head Dr. Michael Worobey, discusses what these findings mean and what they tell us about the HIV virus as a whole.