University of Missouri

June 20, 2022

A Dual Focus: MU researcher earns $181,734 NIH grant and U.S. Public Health Service Award for COVID-19 research in the lab and on campus

By Cara Penquite | Bond LSC Cynthia Tang is an M.D.-Ph.D. student in the Wan lab. Photo by Cara Penquite | Bond LSC Cynthia Tang’s academic career is marked by her propensity to multitask. From earning a major and three minors during her undergrad to making a documentary while getting lab and clinical experience, she makes the most of her time. Recently Tang received the Excellence in Public Health Award from the United States Public Health Service, and a $181.734 National Institutes of Health grant to be used over four years . . . all while getting…

March 16, 2022

Competing with COVID: Researcher suggests varying from vaccines to fight virus

COVID-19 virus particles have spike proteins, represented in red, that attach to receptors on host cells. Antivirals block the receptors on host cells so the virus cannot infect more cells. | Creative Commons Photo By Cara Penquite | Bond LSC Vaccines were the light at the end of the tunnel throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, but virus mutations threaten to extinguish hope of a quick end to the pandemic. Kamlendra Singh turns towards antivirals as the next step. “There will be a time we will find an antiviral which will be very difficult for the virus to mutate…

Feb. 18, 2022

#IAmScience Reinier Suarez

By Cara Penquite | Bond LSC When one of Reinier Suarez’s undergraduate professors suggested he go to graduate school, he was confused. “I had never heard of a Ph.D. in my life,” Suarez said. Three years later, Suarez is a first-year graduate student studying COVID-19 variants. Suarez came to Mizzou as part of the university’s Post-Baccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP), a stepping-stone between his undergraduate studies at Florida International University and his graduate studies at MU. He joined Marc Johnson’s lab at Bond Life Sciences Center as a PREP scholar and liked it enough to stay…

Feb. 2, 2022

Outlining Omicron: researchers determine key mutations in the latest COVID-19 variant

Bond LSC and UNMC scientists explain mutations unique to the Omicron variant Austin Spratt, undergraduate mathematics student in the Kamlendra Singh lab, shows protein models of the Omicron spike protein and the receptor it attaches to when infecting cells. “The genetic codes are used to identify the mutations, and then we use the structure to see how it would change over time. It’s going to give us more information about new mutations that occur,” Spratt said. | Photo by Cara Penquite, Bond LSC By Cara Penquite | Bond LSC It took eight days for…

Nov. 4, 2021

#IAmScience Clayton Rushford

By Lauren Hines | Bond LSC Clayton Rushford isn’t one to complain. While in the Marc Johnson lab at the Bond Life Sciences Center, he’s the guy cheering up lab mates when experiments fail or going with the flow when he must repeat an experiment for the fifth time. As long as he’s doing science, not much can bring him down. “It seems like a very generic answer but the fun thing about [science as a whole] is it’s more or less how we explain all the things that are going on around us with the use…

Oct. 13, 2021

Turning Back the Clock

Megan Sheridan, a postdoctoral fellow working with the R. Michael Roberts lab, removes the base solution from a demonstrated sample of stem cells that will be grown into placental cells for study of their interaction with the Zika virus. | photo by Phillip Sitter, Bond LSC By Lauren Hines | Bond LSC At 24 weeks pregnant, a baby can hear the mother’s lullabies. At 30 weeks, her belly is a little over a foot large. At 40, the hospital bag is already packed and ready to go. But imagine delivering only two weeks…

April 30, 2020

Treating COVID-19: Bond LSC lab explores effectiveness of remdesivir and other potential drugs

By Jerry Duggan | Bond LSC As countries hang their hopes on the drug remdesivir for battling COVID-19, recent modeling and computer-aided drug evaluation at the University of Missouri caution to keep an open mind to other drug treatments. Kamlendra Singh at MU’s Bond Life Sciences Center assessed remdesivir and several other drugs for long-term success in treating coronavirus causing the pandemic across the world. His results were published April 26 in the journal Pathogens. “Remdesivir is working against COVID-19, but these other drugs are in no way inferior to it,”…

April 29, 2020

The Lab in Time of COVID-19

The main halls of Bond LSC are empty due to researchers being told to work from home. | photo by Roger Meissen, Bond LSC. By Lauren Hines | Bond LSC On an average day, you can find post doctorate Norman Best surrounded by corn in the greenhouse or at his bench in the McSteen lab doing molecular work. However, since Columbia and state leaders issued a stay-at-home order on March 25 to prevent the spread of COVID-19, this means Bond LSC is mostly empty and researchers like Best are at home writing. “It’s definitely…

April 29, 2020

Influenza & COVID-19 Research: A Campus-wide Effort

Henry Wan | photo by Roger Meissen, Bond LSC By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC With shelter in place orders being extended throughout the country and events being canceled, COVID-19 is a pressing issue, and influenza researchers at MU have been pivoting recently to begin studying the virus. Henry Wan, an influenza researcher and Bond LSC principal investigator, is planning on expanding his work to start looking at COVID-19 along with a team of epidemiologists, anthropologists, engineers, and more at MU. While influenza and COVID-19 are not the same virus, both are infectious respiratory…