Competition for National Institute of Health Academic Research Enhancement Awards is stiff. And it’s rarer still to score four in a row. The Mount has done just that, to the tune of $1.2 million.
So, what is it that makes research at the Mount stand out?
The NIH grants were focused on helping the Mount continue its work in type 2 diabetes research. “We’re looking at a peptide called IAPP and the connection between its aggregation and dying pancreatic beta cells. Students are literally testing a wide variety of substances (ranging from natural products to synthetic compounds), running experiments to see if they can stop IAPP from aggregating and prevent the beta cells from dying,” says Luiza Nogaj, PhD, co-director of the University’s Global Women in STEM program and professor of biology.
About a year and a half ago, Nogaj’s team applied for a series of regional patents for a class of peptides they created that are able to help the pancreatic beta cells. “The goal is to discover if these peptides could be a potential drug target and if our work could become a new life-saving drug. I’m so proud of this program. All of our progress is because of the research being done by our undergrads.”
Researchers at the Mount are looking at questions that have either never been asked or never been answered before. “This isn’t the kind of lab where students just go through the motions of repeating other people’s experiments," Nogaj explains. "We don’t know the answers or what’s supposed to happen. Our students are learning the techniques, but their results are guiding the process of what to do next and how to modify and improve these peptides. They’re doing their own work, and that work has a real impact.”
The personal attention and advising undergraduate science students receive is also quite unique. “Freshmen and sophomores are sometimes surprised when we ask them what they want to do after college," she says. "But those college years go fast, and we want to make them as productive as possible. If we know a student wants to go to graduate school, we’ll get them involved in research right away. If they are headed to medical school, they’ll do research too, but then we want to get them into a hospital shadowing experience. And we look for summer opportunities for students who want to go into public health.
"So, every student at The Mount has a path that’s personalized specifically for them, and they have people who are looking out for them — looking to make sure they achieve their goals by the time they graduate. The Mount is really about creating opportunities for undergraduate students to get involved in real stories and real research.”
Original source can be found here.
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