The Science Path project, in partnership with the school district, aims to tackle locally the national issue of students going to college underprepared for more rigorous science courses. The idea is that if the curriculum and instruction for these critical subjects are enhanced in K-12, students will be better prepared for the college coursework. PBSC also plans to partner with Florida Atlantic University on the initiative.

The Obama administration and Gov. Rick Scott are among those stressing the need for more workers with solid skills in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects. The U.S. Department of Commerce projects a 17 percent growth nationwide in STEM jobs by 2018.

“The current economic forecast for this industry outpaces even health care,” said Dr. Dennis Gallon, Palm Beach State president. “The College stands ready to partner and support the development of programs which support quality education for our students and prepare them to take their place in the workforce, advancing STEM industries.”

Just 1 in 3 ACT-tested high school graduates met the College Readiness Benchmark in Science in 2011 and at the state level only 20 percent of graduates were college ready in the subject, according to ACT Profile Reports.

On the local level, Palm Beach State College has experienced troubling withdrawal rates from its six introductory level biology and chemistry courses, raising serious questions about the preparation of the county’s high school graduates.

“We are excited to have the support of the Quantum Foundation in working together to significantly move the needle of students’ success in these two fields and ultimately help to grow a significant portion of our workforce,” said Pat Lord, major gifts director for the Palm Beach State College Foundation.

The College plans to launch a pilot program at the Palm Beach Gardens campus, the site of its existing Math and Science Summer Institute and the Employ Florida Banner Center for Life Sciences, working with area high schools. The program eventually will be expanded to other high schools in the county. While the Science Path project currently focuses on high school, to further enhance the science curriculum throughout the school district, the College is seeking other funding opportunities to align the curriculum of middle and elementary schools. In addition to curriculum alignment, the partnership will include shared professional development opportunities for college faculty and K-12 school teachers, the initial design of a virtual library of learning objects for faculty and teachers and the development of cooperative teams to identify students who demonstrate interest and potential in STEM.

The timing of the project comes just as the state has boosted its graduation requirements calling for all students beginning in 2013-2014 to pass biology, chemistry and one equally rigorous science course to receive a high school diploma.

It also falls in line with the more aggressive efforts of the Quantum Foundation to enhance science education in the county through the funding of programs that provide curriculum alignment, student pipelines into science and science teaching development.

Dr. Kwon joins MPFI from the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, where he served as a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Bernardo Sabatini, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Dr. Taniguchi comes to the Institute from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was a research investigator in the lab of Dr. Z. Josh Huang.

Dr. Taniguchi’s research probes the cellular and molecular mechanisms that are responsible for the development of neural circuits in the cerebral cortex, the largest and most complex area of the brain, whose proper function is critical for sensory perception, motor control, and cognition. He is highly regarded in the field for pioneering work that has made it possible to target molecular probes to specific classes of neurons in the cerebral cortex that utilize the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA. This discovery has opened the door to a broad range of experiments that will make it possible to analyze the structure, function and development of GABAergic neurons, and to use this information to address a host of neurological and psychiatric disorders. Among other scientific goals, Dr. Taniguchi plans to work collaboratively with colleagues at Max Planck Florida Institute to expand his studies of GABA neurons and their roles in regulating the activity of circuits in cerebral cortex.

Their study, published in Neurosurgical Focus, suggests this tool, known as frontal near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), could offer hospital physicians a safe and cost-effective way to monitor patients who are being treated for a stroke, in real time.

“About one-third of stroke patients in the hospital suffer another stroke, and we have few options for constantly monitoring patients for such recurrences,” says the study’s senior investigator, neurocritical care specialist William Freeman, M.D., an associate professor of neurology at Mayo Clinic.

“This was a small pilot study initiated at Mayo Clinic’s campus in Florida, but we plan to study this device more extensively and hope that this bedside tool offers significant benefit to patients by helping physicians detect strokes earlier and manage recovery better,” he says.

Traumatic brain injury, or TBI, is known as the signature injury of soldiers returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq. Blast forces sustained in combat often cause damage to parts of the brain critical to high-level functions influencing memory, attention, decision-making and motor skills. Many veterans developing symptoms after TBI also suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

“Working with the VA, the Department of Defense and private research entities, we will develop novel studies – everything from drug discovery and preclinical work to clinical, social and behavioral trials,” said principal investigator Dr. Paul R. Sanberg, USF senior associate vice president for research and innovation and director of the USF Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair. “Our multidisciplinary work will provide critical knowledge about TBI and its complications that could lead to more effective diagnosis and treatments for soldiers and veterans, as well as skills to improve their physical and psychological adjustment into civilian life.”

“This new federal award is a tremendous boost to USF’s efforts to build a research infrastructure to support our veterans reintegration strategy,” said Karen Holbrook, PhD, USF senior vice president for research, innovation and global affairs.

The two-year, DOD-funded grant joins faculty from across colleges and disciplines.

The grant involves four major projects:

• Researchers will assess in animal models how granulocyte colony stimulating factor (GCSF), a growth factor that mobilizes the body’s own stem cells, may help treat traumatic brain injury.
• A clinical trial will test whether GCSF reduces neurological damage and improves recovery of memory, decision-making and other cognitive functions in soldiers and veterans with TBI, even when administered a month or two after the initial injury. Patients will be recruited from the polytrauma rehabilitation and blast injury programs at James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital.
• In an attempt to identify better diagnostic measures for mild TBI, a frequently underdiagnosed condition, a study will compare the balance, gait, hearing and vestibular functions of otherwise healthy USF student veterans with and without self-reported TBI to those of non-veteran students. Evaluations will be conducted at the USF School of Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Sciences Human Functional Performance Laboratory.
• Using advanced technology researchers will monitor changes in patterns of everyday movement and the cognitive function of TBI patients undergoing smart house-based rehabilitation at the Tampa VA hospital’s Polytrauma Transitional Rehabilitation Program. The study will evaluate whether scientific analysis of movements, tracked by devices like radiofrequency identification and global positioning systems, can help assess therapeutic improvement. A second arm of the study will investigate whether variability in walking patterns is greater for USF student veterans reporting mild TBI than for those without this diagnosis.

The new DOD award adds momentum to USF’s plans to work with the VA and DOD to build a first-of-its kind Center for Rehabilitation, Science, Engineering and Medicine, an interdisciplinary research, education and treatment facility. Over the last three years, the university’s Veterans Reintegration Strategy program has joined researchers across colleges and disciplines to work on studies in areas including TBI, PTSD, robotics and prosthetics, gait and balance, and aging-related disorders.

“This award reflects USF’s collaborative efforts to leverage our research and academic expertise to enhance the quality of life of our men and women in uniform, and their families, who have so selflessly served this country,” said Lt. Gen. Martin Steele (USMC retired), executive director of USF Military Partnerships. “It builds, not only upon interdisciplinary research within the university, but also strengthens our longstanding ties with Tampa Bay’s military community through two major VA hospitals, MacDill Air Force Base, U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command.”

Florida Biologix provides either manual or automated filling services up to 4,000 vials per lot. They have significant experience with formulation and filling of complex biologic products such as proteins, protein complexes, adjuvanted vaccines, oligonucleotides, liquid small molecules and other parenterals. Associated services include drug product in-process and release testing, labeling, packaging, cGMP storage, stability studies, blind labeling, and distribution to clinical study sites.

In addition to this expanded capability, Florida Biologix has recently invested in GMP facility improvements and equipment, as well as outfitted additional classified support space and is adding new warehouse areas to better serve clients’ needs. The Associate Director of Florida Biologix, Dr. Joyce Francis, explains, “These improvements support our multi-year production contracts. As our business grows, we continue to make investments to improve our state-of-the-art facility and overall capabilities.”

Dr. Bruce R. McCord, Associate Director of FIU’s International Forensic Research Institute (“IFRI”) and principal investigator of the study, believes the new testing method has the potential to greatly improve the processing of sexual assault evidence, thus helping to reduce thecurrent national backlog of more than 400,000 completed rape kits, sitting in storage and waiting processing and analysis.

The DOJ-supported study, entitled “Rapid and selective extraction of DNA from rape kits and other forensic evidence using pressure cycling technology,” is expected to help develop and validate a new DNA extraction technique based on PBI’s PCT platform technology. Dr. McCord and other forensic researchers at FIU’s IFRI, note that the PBI pressure system (“Barocycler”) provides an exciting new technology that is capable of extracting DNA from rape kits and other samples without the need to first separate sperm from female epithelial cells, a complex and time-consuming procedure.

FIU’s Dr. McCord, a noted expert in forensic DNA research, describes PBI’s PCT technology as having great potential to simplify the complex processing of rape kits. Currently in most forensic labs, the analyst is required to perform a series of tedious manual extractions in order to separate male and female cells collected on swabs from the victim. With PBI’s PCT System, there is no need to remove female cells prior to analysis. “The PCT technology permits the user to selectively burst open and extract DNA from the perpetrator’s sperm cells, while leaving the victim’s own cells in the swab sample unbroken. This unique capability offers great hope for significantly improving rape kit analysis.”

A new University of Florida study (PLoS One) shows there may be a way to make insect-killing fungi a more potent weapon against fire ants and other pests. Scientists with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences modified the fungus so that it produces a peptide that helps regulate the fire ants’ nervous system.

The modified fungus was five to eight times as effective in killing fire ants, but had no increased effect on an unrelated insect, the greater wax moth. The researchers were surprised to learn that the modified fungus had another benefit — it disrupted the ants’ undertaker-like behavior.

“Potentially, it’s important because if you can disrupt this behavior, you may be able to increase the efficacy of the fungus in the nest, because they won’t take the dead out and you can spread the infection throughout the nest better. In theory, you could use the same amount of fungus and it would be more effective,” said Nemat Keyhani, a UF associate professor of microbiology and cell science and the study’s lead author.

Keyhani also led a research team in a similar study of mosquitoes, publishing the findings in this month’s issue of Nature Biotechnology: Exploiting host molecules to augment mycoinsecticide virulence

In that study, the scientists tested Beauveria bassiana against mosquitoes, modifying the fungus so that it produced another peptide, called TMOF (trypsin-modulating oostatic factor). This hormone, discovered by a UF/IFAS entomologist, stops the mosquitoes from producing a crucial digestive enzyme called trypsin. Though TMOF is important for the normal digestive process, too much of it causes mosquitoes to starve, unable to take nutrients from food.

Keyhani said the goal of both studies was to show that a host molecule, such as a peptide or hormone that an insect uses for a normal physiological process, can be used against it, disrupting that process and making it more susceptible to microbial infections.

In the mosquito study, combining the fungus with TMOF reduced the survival time of the mosquitoes by 25 percent, reduced females’ trypsin activity by 50 percent, and resulted in female mosquitoes laying 40 percent fewer eggs.

“So we’ve now proven the concept in two different ways — one against mosquitoes and one against fire ants,” Keyhani said.

Several complex and costly steps remain before the gene therapy technique can be used in humans, but once at that stage, it has great potential to change lives.

“Imagine that you can’t see or can just barely see, and that could be changed to function at some levels so that you could read, navigate, maybe even drive — it would change your life considerably,” said study co-author William W. Hauswirth, the Rybaczki-Bullard professor of ophthalmology in the UF College of Medicine and a professor and eminent scholar in department of molecular genetics and microbiology and the UF Genetics Institute. “Providing the gene that’s missing is one of the ultimate ways of treating disease and restoring significant visual function.”

The researchers tackled a condition called X-linked retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic defect that is passed from mothers to sons. Girls carry the trait, but do not have the kind of vision loss seen among boys. About 100,000 people in the U.S. have a form of retinitis pigmentosa, which is characterized by initial loss of peripheral vision and night vision, which eventually progresses to tunnel vision, then blindness. In some cases, loss of sight coincides with the appearance of dark-colored areas on the usually orange-colored retina.

The UF researchers previously had success pioneering the use of gene therapy in clinical trials to reverse a form of blindness known as Leber’s congenital amaurosis. About 5 percent of people who have retinitis pigmentosa have this form, which affects the eye’s inner lining.

“That was a great advance, which showed that gene therapy is safe and lasts for years in humans, but this new study has the potential for a bigger impact, because it is treating a form of the disease that affects many more people,” said John G. Flannery, a professor of neurobiology at the University of California, Berkeley who is an expert in the design of viruses for delivering replacement genes. Flannery was not involved in the current study.

The X-linked form of retinitis pigmentosa addressed in the new study is the most common, and is caused by degeneration of light-sensitive cells in the eyes known as photoreceptor cells. It starts early in life, so though affected children are often born seeing, they gradually lose their vision.

“These children often go blind in the second decade of life, which is a very crucial period,” said co-author Alfred S. Lewin, a professor in the UF College of Medicine department of molecular genetics and microbiology and a member of the UF Genetics Institute. “This is a compelling reason to try to develop a therapy, because this disease hinders people’s ability to fully experience their world.”

Both Lewin and Hauswirth are members of UF’s Powell Gene Therapy Center.

The UF researchers and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania performed the technically challenging task of cloning a working copy of the affected gene into a virus that served as a delivery vehicle to transport it to the appropriate part of the eye. They also cloned a genetic “switch” that would turn on the gene once it was in place, so it could start producing a protein needed for the damaged eye cells to function.

After laboratory tests proved successful, the researchers expanded their NIH-funded studies and were able to cure animals in which X-linked retinitis pigmentosa occurs naturally. The injected genes made their way only to the spot where they were needed, and not to any other places in the body. The study gave a good approximation of how the gene therapy might work in humans.

“The results are encouraging and the rescue of the damaged photoreceptor cells is quite convincing,” said Flannery, who is on the scientific advisory board of the Foundation Fighting Blindness, which provided some funding for the study. “Since this type of study is often the step before applying a treatment to human patients, showing that it works is critical.”

The researchers plan to repeat their studies on a larger scale over a longer term, and make a version of the virus that proves to be safe in humans. Once that is achieved, a pharmaceutical grade of the virus would have to be produced and tested before moving into clinical trials in humans. The researchers will be able to use much of the technology they have already developed and used successfully to restore vision.

The new study, published in  ACS Chemical Biology, describes a method to find compounds that target defective RNAs, specifically RNA that carries a structural motif known as an “expanded triplet repeat.” The triplet repeat, a series of three nucleotides repeated many more times than normal in the genetic code of affected individuals, has been associated with a variety of neurological and neuromuscular disorders.

“For a long time it was thought that only the protein translated from this type of RNA was toxic,” said Matthew Disney, an associate professor at Scripps Florida who led the new study. “But it has been shown recently that both the protein and the RNA are toxic. Our discovery of a small molecule that binds to RNA and shuts off its toxicity not only further demonstrates that the RNA is toxic but also opens up new avenues for therapeutic development because we have clearly demonstrated that small molecules can reverse this type of defect.”

In the new research, the scientists used a query molecule called 4′, 6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI) as a chemical and structural template to find similar but more active compounds to inhibit a toxic CAG triplet repeat. One of these compounds was then found effective in inhibiting the RNS toxicity of the repeat in patient-derived cells, which demonstrated an improvement in early-stage abnormalities.

“The toxic RNA defect actually sucks up other proteins that play critical roles in RNA processing, and that is what contributes to these various diseases,” Disney said. “Our new compound targets the toxic RNA and inhibits protein binding, shutting off the toxicity. Since the development of drugs that target RNA is extremely challenging, these studies can open up new avenues to exploit RNA drug targets that cause a host of other RNA-mediated diseases.” The methods in the new study could accelerate the development of therapeutics to treat a variety of incurable diseases such as Huntington’s disease, Spinocerebellar ataxia, and Kennedy disease.