Gregory Tew and research team score advance in manipulating T cells

Gregory Tew, professor of Polymer Science and Engineering and colleagues, including immunologist Lisa Minter, have found a way to get inside naïve T cells and to deliver bio-active cargo such as proteins and synthetic molecules across what had been a long-locked cell membrane. They do this by using a new synthetic protein transduction domain (PTD) that mimics natural ones. Tew and colleagues call their new macromolecules “PTD mimics” (PTDMs). They are able to slip through the T cell’s membrane and deliver a payload of therapeutic small interfering RNA (siRNA).

The invention is “something like

School of Nursing awarded $892,559 HHS grant to promote diversity in profession

The School of Nursing has received a $892,559 grant to boost an ambitious and wide-ranging three-year program to draw future nurses from minority and disadvantaged communities.
 
The grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Bureau of Health Professions will allow the school to fully implement a program called Achieving Diversity: A Comprehensive Approach to Nursing Workforce Diversity.
 
Program director Jean Swinney said the school has been increasingly active in Springfield and its public schools, promoting and participating in “Nursing Clubs” to introduce students to

UMPD welcomes new chief to ranks

Calling for a strong emphasis on “communication, collaboration and engagement” with the campus and local communities, new Police Chief John K. Horvath was officially sworn in during an Oct. 4 ceremony at the Massachusetts Room of the Mullins Center.
 
Along with a large contingent of UMPD officers and staff, the event was attended by about 75 people, including local and university officials and fellow police officers from Amherst, Amherst College, Hadley, UMass Dartmouth, UMass Boston, Massachusetts State Police, University of Connecticut Health Center, Cheshire, Conn., East Hartford, Conn.,

Governor approves $85 million for new physical sciences building

A new $85 million physical sciences building for the campus is among the projects funded through a $607 million bond package for the UMass system announced this week by Gov. Deval Patrick.
 
The new facility, which will serve the Physics and Chemistry departments, was included in the five-year capital plan recently approved by the Board of Trustees. The funding is part of a $2.2 billion higher education bond bill approved in 2008.
 
Patrick made the announcement at UMass Boston as President Robert L. Caret and other university leaders marked the system’s 150th anniversary.

Peyton attacks breast cancer by studying the disease on biomaterials that act like human tissues

Shelly Peyton, assistant professor of Chemical Engineering, says scientists know that breast cancer will spread to many different types of tissues in the body, and that this migration is the key reason the cancer is deadly. What they don’t know is why some forms of the cancer move to the brain, while others seek out bone or lung tissues.
 
Peyton is now using a three-year, $590,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study how different types of breast cancer interact with different human tissues – tissues she and her research team can create in the laboratory to study how the

Pages