Xavier’s Research Center for Minority Institutions (RCMI) Grant:

Building Capacity in Cancer Research

Dr. Gene D’AmourSenior Vice President for Resource Development

Xavier University of Louisiana

Our Goal - To Become More Competitive

in Cancer Research by Enhancing Infrastructure

Infrastructure?

Faculty

Time

Facilities

Helping Hands/ Staff

Equipment

Strong University

Commitment

Hire additional, mid-career and early-career faculty with promising research portfolios;

Assure that all faculty have the time and staff support needed to become successful;

Provide additional instrumentation cores and services;

Support pilot projects of investigators at the “cusp” of becoming fully competitive;

Enhance administrative support.

How are We Going to Do This?

2002 - NIH Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities endowment grant - $34 M received;

2004 - DOD/Army Breast ($1.2M) and Prostate ($0.9M) Cancer Research grants with Tulane Cancer Center;

2005 - $1.3M P-20 award from the National Cancer Institute with Tulane Health Science Center;

2006 – Became member of Louisiana Cancer Research Consortium with Tulane and LSUHSC – $1M annually;

2007 to 2010 – Additional partnerships with other institutions through COBRE, INBRE (LBRN), LONI, etc.

Why Cancer/Health Disparities – on What are We Building?

Receives circa $7 M/year in NIH funding;

Ranks 3rd in NIH funding among La. Universities – only behind Tulane and LSU;

Ranks 6th among HBCUs in the nation, 1st on a per capita basis;

Ranks in the top 15% of all universities, top 8% on a per capita basis.

At Present, Xavier

In addition to promoting a variety of NIH and NCRR

“Strategic Priorities” related to research, Xavier’s RCMI program adds significant

value in other dimensions, by:

City/State investing high levels of funds to build and attract new bioscience companies

o Greater New Orleans Biosciences Economic Development District (GNOBEDD)

o New Orleans BioInnovation Center (NOBIC)

Xavier has launched an aggressive Tech Transfer Initiative, e.g. recent $6M SBIR grant to AutoImmune Technologies.

Promoting Economic Development in New Orleans’ and Louisiana’s

Priority Sectors

#1 in nation in graduating African American students in biology, chemistry, and physics;

#1 in placing African American students into medical schools;

50% of our STEM students go onto graduate or professional school;

A top producer of African American Pharmacists.

Building on and Intensifying Xavier’s “Pipeline” Successes

GEAUX

SAINTS!!

RCMI Cancer Research Program at Xavier University

Principal Investigator

Gene D’Amour, Ph.D.

Program DirectorGuangdi Wang,

Ph.D.

RCMI Goals

Goal #1. Enable Xavier to increase the number and quality of competitive researchers by hiring mid-career and early-career level faculty and assuring they have the tools and support needed to become successful.

Goal #2. Enhance the competitiveness of strategically selected existing faculty and programs. This will have measurable outcomes including quality publications and successful grant proposals aimed at mainstream funding opportunities.

Goal #3. Provide additional research cores and services thereby expanding and enhancing access to critical resources that will lead to greater success of faculty research programs.

Goal #4. Enable enhanced administrative services to assure research support activities meet faculty needs, provide new incentives and assure federal compliance requirements are met with minimal additional burdens being placed on faculty.

Goal #5. Support selected pilot projects that will assist investigators who are at the “cusp” of becoming fully competitive, allowing them to take their research projects to a new level.

Xavier RCMI Organizational Chart

Major Instrumentation Core Support biomedical research projects on

campus by providing essential analytical instrumentation

Maintain and operate existing instruments

Acquire new instruments Provide technical support for user

community of the core 400 MHz NMR HPLC-MS/MS Chromatography (GC-MS; HPLC-UV) 2D Gel Electrophoresis FTIRs UV-Vis Field Emission SEM

Cell and Molecular Biology CoreCell Culture

– Cell stocks, Bulk culture of cells, Plating of cells– Media formulation, Cryo preservation of cell stocks– Transfection of cells, Stably transfected cell lines– Bioassays (e.g. proliferation, reporter gene, toxicity,

etc.)

Gene Expression and Proteomics– Protein extraction and enrichment– Western blots, 2D gels, Gel imaging and analysis,

Gel spot cutting and digestion– RNA isolation, cDNA libraries, Northern blots, Real

Time PCR

Training– Basic and advance cell culture techniques– Development and optimization of bioassays– Proteomics, Real Time PCR, Western and Northern

Blot

Structure & Molecular Modeling Core

• Structure-Based Modeling - Uses either protein crystal structures or homology models to gather information regarding ligand binding modes and interactions.

Heme

1MEP

Phe258

Phe224

Phe123

Ile386Val382

2MEPhen

Objectives: 1. To establish a research core laboratory

with appropriate core personnel.2. Provide computational resources including

access to hardware and software for molecular modeling and computational biology.

3. Provide x-ray crystallographic coordinates for small organic (druglike) molecules and small peptides.

Structure & Molecular Modeling Core

• Ligand-Based Modeling – includes techniques that can be used to understand and predict bioactive conformations, pharmacological activity, and three-dimensional quantitative structure activity relationships (3D-QSAR).

• Small Molecule X-ray Crystallography -Used to determine absolute configuration, unit cell packing details, unique intra- and intermolecular interactions, and as reference structures in molecular modeling studies.

Pilot Projects• Nanoparticles of Magnetic Iron Oxides as Prospective Diagnostic Agents PI: Vladimir Kolesnichenko, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry

• Reaction Rate Determination and Optimization of Pamam Dendrimer-Small Molecule Conjugation: Improving the Efficiency of Chemotherapeutic Nanodevice SynthesisPI: Stassi DiMaggio, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry

• A Hybrid Data Mining Framework to Boost Fundamental Cancer Research by Efficient Characterization of Insertion Preferences of Retrotransposons: a Comprehensive Study on Alu ElementsPI: Kun Zhang, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Sciences