No Ordinary Summer Jobs
August 2, 2002
A number of science students at the University of Richmond are spending their summer in laboratories with their professors working on research projects that could some day lead to better treatment and even prevention of certain human diseases.
One group of chemistry students is engaged in research that helps pharmaceutical companies develop new generations of popular drugs that are more selective and more active at lower concentrations and have fewer side effects.
Some biology students are examining the ways free radicals alter DNA. Other biology students are helping discover enzymes that may some day aid in finding a way to eradicate tuberculosis and leprosy.
Chemistry professor John Gupton has five undergraduates working on research projects with him, and the chemistry department has 19 altogether.
"We are in the business of making organic molecules," he says. And he and his students want to make them more efficiently. What they do is make synthetic molecules based on ones already shown to be effective in pharmaceuticals. The goal is to alter the existing compounds to make them even more effective.
Joe Cady, a rising senior from Boston, says the summer schedule enables him to spend an entire year on the project and will give him a better chance at getting something published. Plus, "It has helped me learn so much more about chemistry than I could in a classroom."
Merck has already taken some of the chemistry Gupton and his students have done to make the second generation of VIOXX. AIDS researchers also are testing a couple of compounds Gupton and his students have built. "That's kind of neat," he says. "It's an opportunity to push science a little bit forward."
"Every day," Michelle Hamm says, "DNA is being attacked by free radicals." Simply the act of breathing can form free radicals, those damaging atoms or groups of atoms with an odd (unpaired) number of electrons. When free radicals react with DNA, they can damage or kill cell membranes and create a domino effect leading to cancer and other diseases and aging.
By synthesizing and studying molecules, Hamm and her students are trying to find out what exact properties lead to mutations.
Discovering new enzymes is the bottom line for Suzanne O'Handley. "There's a lot out there that nobody knows anything about," she says. She and her students are studying bacteria. rather than people and higher organisms because, she laughs, "when the world ends, it's going to be microbes that wipe us out."
One enzyme they have discovered is in both of the microbes that cause tuberculosis and leprosy. That's important because one-third of the world is infected with TB, and 2 million to 3 million people a year die from the disease. And the eradication of leprosy is "not a done deal," O'Handley says. "Most doctors can't diagnose it."
Debra Wohl and her students are studying questions of biodiversity. Are more species better than one? Is biodiversity important? "One would think that biodiversity is important," Wohl says, "but we don't know."
Neli Matcheva, one of two students working on the project, says, "I love biology. I'm a freshman, and I'm doing research. I'm very glad, very proud of myself."