Department – Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Chair – Surinder K. Batra, Ph.D.
Number of people in department (faculty/staff):
Faculty – 25
Students – 44
Post-docs – 16
Staff – 14
Courtesy Faculty – 39
Total – 138
New faculty joined during last 3 years:
Rebecca Deegan, Ph.D.
Punita Dhawan, Ph.D.
Ricia Katherine Hyde, Ph.D.
Sukhwinder Kaur, Ph.D.
Muzafar Macha, Ph.D.
Moorthy Ponnusamy, Ph.D.
Armen Petrosyan, Ph.D.
Satyanarayana Rachagani, Ph.D.
Amar Singh, Ph.D.
Melissa Teoh-Fitzgerald, Ph.D.
Kelly Trujillo, Ph.D.
New programs:
Prostate Cancer Program (Basic and Translational)
GI Cancer Program
Clinical Validation Center (CVC) for diagnosis of pancreatic cancer
Program Project in Pancreatic Cancer (MUC16)
Significant New Research Grants (2014-15):
- Surinder Batra, Ph.D., $1.57M from the NIH to study "MIC-1 and its functional partners in prostate cancer racial disparity"
- Surinder Batra, Ph.D. & Maneesh Jain, Ph.D., $2.18 million grant from NIH, NCI to study "Targeted Radiation Therapy for Pancreatic Cancer"
- Surinder Batra, Ph.D. & Ram Mahato, Ph.D., $1.55M from the NIH to study "Polymeric Nanomedicines of Hedgehog Inhibitor and miRNA for Treating Pancreatic Cancer"
- Surinder K. Batra, Ph.D., $100,000 from the NIH (Subcontract from UNL) to study "High Specificity MicroRNA Microarray Analysis without PCR for Cancer Screening and Research"
- Surinder K. Batra, Ph.D., $162,000 from the NIH (TMEN supplement) to study "Extracellular vesicle mediated cellular cross-talk in Pancreatic Tumor Microenvironment"
- Surinder K. Batra, Ph.D., $1.56M Targeting mucin and EGFR axis in pancreatic cancer
- Surinder K. Batra, Ph.D and Chi Lin, M.D, $1.63M. Novel Targets in the radiosensitization of pancreatic cancer. NCI SPORE, Project 2
- Rebecca Deegan, Ph.D., $1.59M from the NIH to study "MnTE-2-PyP as a radioprotector in prostate Cancer Therapy"
- Kaustubh Datta, Ph.D., $1.5 million R01 grant from the National Cancer Institute to study neuropilin-2 and prostate cancer bone metastasis.
- Punita Dhawan, Ph.D., VA Merit award to study the "Role of Claudin-1 in Colon Cancer"
- Ricia Katherine Hyde, Ph.D., NIH R00 award for $936,244 to study "Analysis of Initiating Events in Inv(16) Associated Acute Myeloid Leukemia"
- Maneesh Jain, Ph.D., NIH Cobre project for $674,979 to study "Nebraska Center for Nanomedicine – MUC4-based vaccine for pancreatic cancer"
- Maneesh Jain, Ph.D., $100,000 from the NIH STTR program to study "Mucins in the Diagnosis and Prognosis of Pancreatic Disease" with company partner, Sanguine Diagnostics And Therapeutics, Inc.
- Prakash Kshirsagar (Jain & Batra, Mentors), Ph.D., DoD Postdoctoral award, $124,000, to study "Nanotechnology based detection of novel microRNAs for early diagnosis of prostate cancer"
- Ming-Fong Lin, Ph.D., $200,000 DoD "Nebraska Prostate Cancer Research Program".
- Richard MacDonald, Ph.D., $358,000 R21 grant from NIH to study IGF-II-Based approach to therapy for pancreatic cancer
- Justin Mott, M.D., Ph.D., NIH Cobre project with UNL for $677,250 to study "Palmitoleate Protects against Cholangiocyte Lipoapoptosis"
- Armen Petrosyan, Ph.D., $565,000 K01 Award from the NIH to study alcohol effect on golgi morphology and function
- Moorthy Ponnusamy, Ph.D., $383,000 from the NIH (K22) to study "hPaf1/PD2 in Pancreatic Cancer Stem Cells"
- Amar Singh, Ph.D., NIH R01 for $653,206 to study the "Role of Claudin-2 in Inflammatory Diseases and Colon Cancer"
- Melissa Teoh-Fitzgerald, Ph.D., NIH R01 grant for $1.5M to study "Extracellular Redox Signaling in mammary tumor-fibroblast interactions"
Significant Publications (2014-15)
2014
Ponnusamy MP and Batra SK. Insights into the role of nicotine in pancreatic stem cell activation and acinar dedifferentiation. Gastroenterology, 147(5):962-5, 2014
Teoh-Fitzgerald ML, Fitzgerald MP, Zhong W, Askeland RW, Domann FE. Epigenetic reprogramming governs EcSOD expression during human mammary epithelial cell differentiation, tumorigenesis and metastasis. Oncogene. 33(3):358-68, 2014
Petrosyan A, Holzapfel MS, Muirhead DE and Cheng P-W. Restoration of compact Golgi morphology in advanced prostate cancer enhances susceptibility to galectin 1-induced apoptosis by modifying mucin O-glycan synthesis. Molecular Cancer Research 12(12): 1704-16, 2014.
Peters S.L., Hlady R.A., Opavska J., Klinkebiel D., Pirruccello S.J., Talmon G.A., Sharp J.G., Wu L., Jaenisch R., Simpson M.A., Karpf A.R., Opavsky R. Tumor suppressor functions of Dnmt3a and Dnmt3b in the prevention of malignant mouse lymphopoiesis. Leukemia 28(5):1138-42, 2014.
Li, H., Spagnol, G., Naslavsky, N., Caplan, S., and Sorgen, P. L. TC-PTP directly interacts with connexin43 to regulate gap junction intercellular communication. J. Cell Sci. 127:3269-79, 2014
Singh AB, Dhawan P. Claudins and cancer: Fall of the soldiers entrusted to protect the gate and keep the barrier intact. Semin Cell Dev Biol. 42:58-65, 2014
Kaur S, Sharma N, Krishn SR, Lakshmanan I, Rachagani S, Baine MJ, Smith LM, Lele SM, Sasson AR, Guha S, Mallya K, Anderson JM, Hollingsworth MA, Batra SK. MUC4-Mediated Regulation of Acute Phase Protein Lipocalin 2 through HER2/AKT/NF-κB Signaling in Pancreatic Cancer. Clinical Cancer Research, 20(3):688-700, 2014.
2015
Kumar S, Torres M, Kaur S, Rachagani S, Momi N, Baine M, Joshi S, Gilling C, Wyatt T, Jain, M, Joshi S and Batra SK. Smoking accelerates pancreatic cancer progression by promoting differentiation of MDSCs and inducing HB-EGF expression in macrophages. Oncogene 34(16):2052-60, 2015.
Reinecke JB, Katafiasz D, Naslavsky N, Caplan S. Novel functions for the endocytic regulatory proteins MICAL-L1 and EHD1 in mitosis. Traffic. 16(1):48-67, 2015.
Keck B, Wach S, Taubert H, Ott OJ, Kunath F, Hartmann A, Bertz S, Weiss C, Baretton GB, Rodel C, Sauer R, Fietkau R, Wullich B, Krause FS, Datta K, Muders MH. Neuropilin-2 and its ligand VEGF-C predict treatment response after transurethral resection and radiochemotherapy in bladder cancer patients. International Journal of Cancer. 136(2):443-51. 2015
Hyde RK, Zhao L, Alemu L, Liu PP. Runx1 is required for hematopoietic defects and leukemogenesis in Cbfb-MYH11 knock-in mice. Leukemia 29(8):1771-8, 2015
Lu Q, Insinna C, Ott C, Stauffer J, Pintado PA, Rahajeng J, Baxa U, Walia V, Cuenca A, Hwang YS, Daar IO, Lopes S, Lippincott-Schwartz J, Jackson PK, Caplan S, Westlake CJ. Early steps in primary cilium assembly require EHD1/EHD3-dependent ciliary vesicle formation. Nature Cell Biology 7(3):228-40.2015
Petrosyan A, Ali M, and Cheng P-W. Keratin 1 plays a critical role in Golgi localization of Core 2 N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase M via interaction with its cytoplasmic tail. J Biol Chem 290(10):6256-69, 2015
Bhat AA, Pope JL, Smith JJ, Ahmad R, Chen X, Washington MK, Beauchamp RD, Singh AB, Dhawan P. Claudin-7 expression induces mesenchymal to epithelial transformation (MET) to inhibit colon tumorigenesis. Oncogene 34(35):4570-80, 2015
Costa-Silva B, Aiello NM, Singh S, Zhang H, Thakur BK, Becker A, Hoshino A, Mark MT, Molina H, Xiang J, Zhang T, Theilen T-M, García-Santos G, Williams , Ararso Y, Huang Y, Rodrigues G, Shen T-L, Labori KJ, Lothe IMB, Kure EH,. Ocean AJ, Hernandez J, Doussot A, Ebbesen S, Grandgenett P, Hollingsworth M, Jain M, Mallya K, Batra SK,. Jarnagin WR, Schwartz RE, Matei I, Peinado H, Stanger B, Bromberg J, and Lyden D. Pancreatic cancer exosomes initiate pre-metastatic niche formation in the liver. Nature Cell Biology 17(6):816-26, 2015
Katoch,P., Mitra,S., Ray,A., Kelsey,L.S., Roberts,B., Wahl III JK, Johnson KR, and Mehta,P.P. The Carboxyl Tail of Connexin32 Regulates Gap Junction Assembly in Human Prostate and Pancreatic Cancer Cells. J Biol Chem 290, 4647-4662, 2015
Macha M, Rachagani S, Pai P, Gupta S, Lydiatt W, Smith R, Johansson S, Lele S, Kakar S, Lee J, Meza J, GantiA, JainM and Batra SK. MUC4 Regulates Cellular Senescence in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma (HNSCC) through p16/Rb Pathway. Oncogene, 34(13):1698-708, 2015
Muniyan, S., Chen, S.J., Lin, F.F., Wang, Z.Z., Mehta, P.P., Batra, S.K., Lin, M.F. ErbB-2 signaling plays a critical role in regulating androgen-sensitive and castration-resistant androgen receptor-positive prostate cancer cells. Cellular Signaling 27, 2261-2271, 2015
Rachagani S, Macha MA, Heimann N, Seshacharyulu P, Haridas D, Chugh S, Batra SK. Clinical implications of miRNAs in the pathogenesis, diagnosis and therapy of pancreatic cancer. Advances Drug Delivery Reviews 81C:16-33, 2015
Chou, Y.W., Lin, F.F., Muniyan, S., Lin, F.C., Chen, C.S., Wang, J., Huang, C.C., Lin, M.F. Cellular prostatic acid phosphatase (cPAcP) serves as a useful biomarker of histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors in prostate cancer cell growth suppression. Cell & Biosciences 5:38, 2015
Lu S, Mott JL, and Harrison-Findik DD. Saturated Fatty Acids Induce Post-transcriptional Regulation of HAMP mRNA via AU-rich Element Binding Protein, HuR. J. of Biological Chemistry, 290(40):24178-89, 2015
Yang H, Matsumoto Y, Trujillo KM, Osley MA, Tomkinson AE. Role of the yeast DNA repair protein Nej1 in end processing during the repair of DNA double strand breaks by non-homologous end joining. DNA Repair, 31:1-10, 2015
Other highlights
Nebraska Prostate Cancer Research Program – Ming-Fong Lin, Ph.D. and William Chaney, Ph.D., worked on a collaborative program between UNMC and Clark Atlanta University providing summer research training opportunities to undergraduate students from a Historically Black College and University (HBCU).
Awards
Faculty members:
Kaustubh Datta, Ph.D. – 2015 Distinguished Scientist Award
Melissa Teoh-Fitzgerald, Ph.D. – 2015 New Investigator Award
Melissa Teoh-Fitzgerald, Ph.D. – 2015 Joseph P. Gilmore Distinguished New Investigator Award
Laurey Steinke, Ph.D. – 2015 Spirit of Community Service Award
Post-docs:
Ashley Mohr, Ph.D. – 2015 Charles Trey, M.D. Memorial Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Award from American Liver Foundation
Ashley Mohr, Ph.D. – Excellence in Oral Presentation, BMB Annual Research Symposium
Samikshan Dutta, Ph.D. – Excellence in Presentation of a Scientific Poster, BMB Annual Research Symposium
Graduate students:
James Reinecke – Midwest Student Biomedical Research Forum (poster or oral presentation)
Suhasini Joshi – Midwest Student Biomedical Research Forum (poster or oral presentation)
Kasturi Banerjee – Midwest Student Biomedical Research Forum (poster or oral presentation)
Srustidhar Das – Outstanding Achievement in Graduate Studies, BMB Annual Research Symposium
Seema Chugh – Outstanding Comprehensive Exam, BMB Annual Research Symposium
Saswati Karmakar – Highest GPA – first-year student, BMB Annual Research Symposium
Priya Pai – Excellence in Oral Presentation, BMB Annual Research Symposium
Shuwei Xie – Excellence in Oral Presentation, BMB Annual Research Symposium
Hanjun Li – Excellence in Presentation of a Scientific Poster, BMB Annual Research Symposium
Staff members:
Kavita Mallya – Gold ‘U’ Award, April 2015