News and Announcements
Santa gets plastic surgery
There is no other explanation for the change in his appearance from last year. None whatsoever.
December 14, 2022
P4-07-63
She couldn’t get enough of the Riverwalk in October at BMES, so Siena returned to present at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS). She is on the cutting edge of localized immunotherapy and fashion!!
December 8, 2022
Khue wins award and presents at SITC
During one of the pre-eminent gatherings of cancer nerds, the Society for the Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Annual Meeting, “Cool Hand” Khue presented his research on the development of a novel antibody against vasoactive intestinal peptide. Khue won a travel award and tried to use it to go St. Bart’s, but SITC made him go to Boston. It was worth a shot.
November 10, 2022
Maura gets married!
During a particularly long incubation step, Maura Vrabel decided to become Maura Vrabel Brown. A master of efficiency, Maura carefully treated her cells then hustled down to the church and found an anesthesiologist (cha-ching!!) named Dr. Brad Brown and the rest is history. When asked to comment, Maura figured that she “would get married at some point” and “the 6 hour incubation time provided a really good window of opportunity.” Congrats to the happy couple!!
October 14, 2022
Young man watches Siena’s talk at BMES
A smartly dressed onlooker took in Siena’s presentation at the BMES Annual Meeting in San Antonio. He was wearing a navy blue suit, a white shirt and probably a tie. His hair was parted and gelled on the left and he had no visible neck tattoos so it probably wasn’t Post.
October 14, 2022
Khue & Siena collaborate to end mouse COVID
FACT: Most mice in the world do not have access to -80 freezers for mRNA vaccine storage. Also, mRNA vaccines require healthcare workers for administration. and their inclusion of genetic material aggravates vaccine hesitancy. To solve all three limitations at once, Khue & Siena developed an intranasal COVID vaccine. The vaccine is stable at room temperature, contains no genetic material and could be self-administered similar to an intranasal spray (in humans at least). Check out their publication in Frontiers in Immunology.
May 3, 2022
Intravesical chitosan/IL-12 is safe … in mice
If you are a mouse with bladder cancer, boy do we have some good news for you! Khue’s paper in the journal Bladder Cancer, shows that intravesical treatment with the co-formulation of chitosan and interleukin-12 was well-tolerated and induced only mild, transient inflammation in the bladder.
December 13, 2021
Santa’s blinged out!
Check out that rock on his finger!! I mean, you don’t pose like that unless you’re trying to flex.
December 3, 2021
Candidate Vrabel
Maura passed her PhD candidacy exam, much to the surprise of ... no one. Just another wednesday at the office.
July 1, 2021
Summer in the Sandbox!
What’s better than spending your summer in the ImmunoEngineering Lab developing life-saving immunotherapies?! How about getting paid to spend your summer in the ImmunoEngineering Lab developing life-saving immunotherapies. UG researchers Jake Schulman and Robert Kobrin were both named Abrams Scholar REU recipients.
June 2, 2021
Siena wins an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship!!
Look at the shock! And to think she wasn’t even going to apply because the NSF seemed to be prioritizing a bunch of computer stuff! Congrats Siena, well deserved!
March 23, 2021
PPE Santa
Working real hard on that Bass Pro lab sponsorship deal!!
December 4, 2020
Virtual Maura presents at SITC 2020
Maura updated her cryo-immunotherapy studies at the SITC Virtual Meeting. Thanks to our supporters at Boston Scientific, Bhanu Koppolu and Matt Dreher.
November 7, 2020
Pumpkin tumor resections….I think?!
Maura and Siena hone their skillz.
October 30, 2020
‘The Beast’ is published
Our 20,000 word review on localized IL-12 cancer immunotherapies was published in Frontiers in Immunology. If you are having trouble falling asleep tonight, click here.
October 15, 2020
Siena presents at vBMES
Noted murine oncologist, Siena Mantooth, describes how she eliminates pancreas tumors at the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Virtual Meeting. So, if anyone out there has a pet mouse with a pancreatic tumor, give Siena a holler!
October 7, 2020
Jake gets paid
Congrats to UG researcher Jake Schulman for being named an Abrams Scholar for the 2020-21 academic year! Jake’s project will focus on the development of a vaccine to prevent accidental fentanyl overdose.
October 6, 2020
NCBC grant
Thanks to the North Carolina Biotechnology Center for funding our Flash Grant proposal on the “Development of a Th1-biased vaccine for SARS-CoV-2.” We probably can’t beat Pfizer or Moderna to FDA approval, but we’ll be ready for SARS-CoV-3.
July 1, 2020
Feast yer eyes
No one, I mean NO ONE can fake lab work for stock photos as well as we can. Check out that technique!! Check out that PPE!!!!
May, 2020
Welcome Siena Mantooth!!
The pride of Manassas, VA joined the ImmunoEngineering Lab. This is the second chemical engineer from Notre Dame. I think we are on to something…sshhh… don’t tell anyone.
May 26, 2020
Vrabel wins NSF Graduate Research Fellowship!!
In celebration, Maura got a tattoo of the NSF logo on the inside of her eyelids as a constant reminder of her greatness.
March 30, 2020
Jared is EPIC!
Congratulations to Jared Hopkins who graduated with his M.S. in Biomedical Engineering and took a job with Epic Systems in Madison, WI. Don’t worry Jared, your record for ‘Most Taquitos consumed in One Sitting’ is safe for many years to come (or eternity, whichever comes first).
March 1, 2020
CDMRP Lung Cancer grant
Thanks to the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP) for funding our project to compare cryoablation plus localized IL-12 and surgical resection plus localized IL-12 vs. metastatic lung tumors.
February 19, 2020
Ms. Vrabel goes to Washington
Maura presents her cryo-immunotherapy work at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Annual Meeting. Special thanks to Bhanu Koppolu and Matt Dreher at Boston Scientific, who have been great supporters of this work.
November 7, 2019
Khue’s paper published in JBC
His paper builds upon his previous work demonstrated that heparin and heparin sulfate can enhance the activity of IL-12. Heparin chain length and degree of sulfation we found to be critical parameters for enhancing IL-12. Based on these data he proposed a model of stabilization by which heparin enhances binding of IL-12 to its receptor subunits, IL-12Rb1 and IL12Rb2, which both have putative heparin binding domains.
January 22, 2019
So Long Frank!!
One of the goals of our lab is to train good people for their next position. In the immortal words of Bush43 “Mission accomplished!” Frank landed a cushy job as a Process Development Scientist at Grifols! We’d post a pic of Frank, but there are so few that it is quite possible that all of this has been a front for his real gig in the CIA.
January 18, 2019
Dr. Khue G. Nuyen!!!
After a frantic finish which included a couple all nighters, Khue successfully defended his dissertation. He also rode a Cowfish and his dad came from Vietnam to see him walk. That’s what its all about kids.
Khue likes North Carolina so much that he’s going to stick around as a postdoc.
December 16, 2018
Fake Santa
Asked if Santa new Buddy the Elf and he just gave a blank stare, mouth agape. If you don’t know who Buddy the Elf is, then you ain’t Santa. By the way, that’s a good money making scheme. How popular do you think a Buddy the Elf photo opp would be?
December 13, 2018
Sruthi’s paper (finally) published in Breast Cancer Research
It’s not her fault they took forever. Her paper shows that G-CSF can drive expansion of MDSCs which protects G-CSF secreting tumor cells from recognition and elimination by the immune system. If you knockout G-CSF, the highly aggressive 4T1 tumor model becomes quite immunogenic.
October 22, 2018
Welcome Maura Vrabel!!
Maura is a new PhD student. She is a Chemical Engineering grad from Notre Dame. She hails from the thriving metropolis of Boiling Springs, PA and was awarded the NC State Provost’s Fellowship. She likes Notre Dame football from February through December.
August 16, 2018
Welcome Frank Gillam!!
Frank (Francis) B. Gillam, PhD, joins the lab as a postdoc. Frank returns to North Carolina, earning his PhD in Biomolecular Engineering from Virginia Tech where he was President of the Frank Beamer fan club. Frank grew up in Asheville and earne BS and MS degrees from NC State.
January 29. 2018
Khue and Bhanu publish in Scientific Reports
Along with our University of Arkansas colleagues, Bhanu and Khue demonstrate that heparin serves as a co-receptor in order to enhance the bioactivity of IL-12. In addition, heparin is able to recover the IL-12 activity in cells in which both IL-12 receptor subunits have been functionally deleted.
July 13, 2017
Leaving the nest....time to re-load!!
Congratulations to Sean Smith for accepting a postdoc fellowship in the Hammond Lab at MIT!!!!
Congratulations to Bhanu Koppolu for accepting a position with BTG International!!!!
With these departures, the Zaharoff Lab is looking for more graduate students and postdocs. An advertisement for one postdoctoral position is here.
June 30, 2017
Dr. Sean
Congrats to Sean Smith for a successful defense of his dissertation!! They grow up so fast!!
June 1, 2017
All Sean does is win
Sean Smith won 3rd place in the Engineering Division of the 12th Annual Graduate Research Symposium at NC State. He spent all of his winnings on diapers, like a good Dad-to-be. Double congrats, Sean and Emily!!
March 22, 2017
No Santa, No Problem
We went to get our annual lab picture with Santa, as is our tradition, but the jolly old elf was taking a nap. So we had to improvise a little.
December 14, 2016
Congrats Dr. R!!!
Sruthi Ravindranathan successfully defends her dissertation! She is now off to do a postdoctoral fellowship in Dr. Edmund Waller's lab at Emory University. Congratulations and Best of Luck!!!!
December 6, 2016
Sean's manuscript published in OncoImmunology
In his latest paper, Sean Smith characterizes the local and systemic immune response to intravesical immunotherapy of bladder cancer with chitosan/IL-12. The paper is Open Access on the OncoImmunology website or you can download it here.
November 18, 2016
Sean speaks at SITC 2016
Sean's abstract was selected for a podium presentation in the "Emerging Technologies" session at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Annual meeting in National Harbor, MD. The session was well attended and most importantly, he got to eat at the iconic Ben's Chili Bowl in DC.
November 12, 2016
Goodbye Arkansas, hello North Carolina
The Z lab has moved to the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and NC State University. We expect that this move will provide more opportunities to interface with oncologists and drive our cutting edge immunotherapies into the clinic. The goal is and always will be to eliminate the mortality and morbidity associated with cancer. Moving to North Carolina will help us achieve this goal. That said, we will miss our Arkansas colleagues and friends. Arkansas is a special place.
August 15, 2016
Another competition, another win for Sean and VivImmune
Sean's team won the graduate division at the Donald W. Reynolds Tri-State Collegiate Business Plan Competition in Las Vegas. In addition to the $30,000 first place prize, they also received $2,000 for winning the graduate division elevator pitch competition. Read more here.
May 31, 2016
So long Seniors!
A talented group of LVID undergraduate researchers are taking their tale. Seth Washispack enrolled in the accelerated MBA program in the Walton College of Business at U of A. Cassie Walker has accepted a position as a Consulting Analyst with Cerner Corporation. Kristina Maxwell will go to Wash U as a PhD student in Biomedical Engineering. Future physicians Jack Baltz and Annika Tabassum will enroll at UAMS. Tayler Pauls will go to Boston University as a PhD student in Biomedical Engineering.
May 14, 2016
Sruthi's paper published in Marine Drugs
This paper settles a longstanding controversy over whether or not the ubiquitous biopolymer chitosan is immunogenic. Sruthi found that the wide varieties of chitosan from different vendors induce drastically different inflammatory responses. By painstakingly depyrogenating chitosan (i.e. removing endotoxins), Sruthi showed that pure chitosan is more or less immunologically inert.
May 11, 2016
VivImmune wins first place at the Cardinal Challenge
Sean & Co. win first place in the graduate division and $25,000 at the 2016 Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup Collegiate Business Plan Competition. They also won the AT&T Elevator Pitch Contest for $2,000 and the Delta Plastics Innovation Award for $5,000. Read more here.
April 20, 2016
Zaharoff lab spin off, VivImmune, wins first place at the Cardinal Challenge
Sean Smith and colleagues at VivImmune took home $15,000 in cash plus $100,000 of in-kind prizes from the Brown-Forman Cardinal Challenge, a business plan competition at the University of Louisville. Read more here.
February 13, 2016
Sean's review paper published in Immunotherapy
This review makes a strong case for the development of new immunotherapies for non-muscle invasive bladder cancer that are capable of inducing tumor-specific immune responses.
February 9, 2016
Welcome to the world Saanvi Koppolu!!
Bhanu and Weiwei were jealous of Khue so they went and had a baby of their own!!
January 21, 2016
Welcome to the world Maggie Nguyen!!
Khue Nguyen and his wife have a 6lb baby girl. No CRISPR/Cas9 technology was used in the making of this baby!
December 24, 2015
Kristina wins a SURF award
Congratulations to Kristina Maxwell for winning a Student Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) for her project "G-CSF Knockdown Immunomodulation of Breast Cancer Cells for Whole Tumor Cell Vaccine." She will be learning CRISPR/Cas9 technology to knock-out G-CSF in 4T1 breast tumor cells.
December 23, 2015
Sruthi presents breast cancer research at SITC and SABCS
Sruthi Ravindranathan presented her data on breast tumor cell vaccines and immunosuppressive induced by myeloid-derived suppressor cells at the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) in National Harbor, MD and at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in San Antonio.
December 6, 2015
Seth is significant!
Seth Washispack is selected as a "Senior of Significance" for the Class of 2016. This award is given to the top 2% of seniors at the University as determined by the faculty.
December 3, 2015
Rudolph, with your nose so bright...
Great news..Santa was awake this year!! Prior to visiting Santa, Kristina Maxwell, a.k.a. Turkey Tina, showed off her bowling skilz at a Z lab Lunch n' Bowl outing.
December 3, 2015
BMES 2015 in Tampa, FL
Khue Nguyen, Kristina Maxwell, Jack Baltz, Seth Washispack and Tayler Pauls all hung posters at the Biomedical Engineering Society's Annual Meeting in Tampa, FL.
October 10, 2015
Sean presents bladder cancer immunotherapy research to Elsa and Elmo!
Sean Smith presented his most recent bladder immunotherapy findings at the Inaugural CRI-CIMT-EATI-AACR International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference in New York City. He even took time out of his busy schedule to make believers out of Elsa and Elmo! Olaf wasn't so interested.
September 20, 2015
Zaharoff Lab awarded funding for Breast Cancer work
A one-year grant from the Arkansas Breast Cancer Research Program was award to the Zaharoff lab to determine if immune suppression induced by breast cancer can be reversed with cytokine adjuvant therapy following standard-of-care tumor resection. The long term goal of the study is to re-establish immune function in the breast cancer patient in order to prevent progressive recurrences and metastasis which is responsible for more than 90% of breast cancer deaths.
September 1, 2015
Sean goes to Amgen
Sean Smith embarks on a graduate internship in the Comparative Biology and Safety Sciences division of Amgen in South San Francisco.
June 1, 2015
Khue presents at AAI 2015
Khue Nguyen presented a posted titled: "Mechanisms of Cytokine and Chemokine Regulation Interleukin-12 elicits various responses of splenocytes from different mouse strains," at the American Association of Immunologist (AAI) 2015 Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA.
May 1, 2015
David Zaharoff is COE's Rising Star
David Zaharoff was recognized by the College of Engineering with the Rising Star Faculty Award. The award is based classic metrics of scholastic activities (i.e., publications, impact, number of PhD and MS students graduated, extramural funding, patent submissions that lead to local economy development, prestigious awards like NSF, DOD, DOE, NIH career awards, etc.).
April 28, 2015
Zaharoff recognized in University's Top 15
David Zaharoff was recognized by the offices of the Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Vice Provost for Research and Economic Development as one of the University of Arkansas' Top 15 most highly funded in fiscal year 2014.
April 28, 2015
Michaela Mertz wins BMEG Outstanding Senior
Congratulations to Michaela Mertz who was named Department of Biomedical Engineering Outstanding Senior for the Class of 2015. Michaela will pursue her PhD studies at the University of Florida in the fall.
April 27, 2015
Michaela Mertz receives NSF GRF Honorable Mention
Graduating senior Michaela Mertz receives the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Honorable Mention.
April 23, 2015
Ethan Lowry presents at AACR 2015
Ethan Lowry presents his chitosan hydrogel work at American Association for Cancer Research 2015 Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA
April 21, 2015
Zaharoff Lab featured on Arkansas Short Takes
As a recipient of funding support from the Women's Giving Circle, several Z lab members make cameos in this short video.
April 1, 2015
Ethan Lowry presents research at State Capitol
Ethan Lowry presented his chitosan hydrogel research to state senators and representatives at the State Capitol building in Little Rock. In the fall, Ethan will pursue a PhD in biomedical engineering at the University of Auckland, New Zealand
February 5, 2015
Zaharoff Lab visits Santa
After a Holiday Feast at Penguin Ed's BBQ, members of the Z lab descend upon Santa for our annual lab photo.
December 10, 2014