RTI Newsroom

A biochemical breakthrough using simple carbon atoms by Ken Yamada, PhD, and Anastasia Khvorova, PhD, has dramatically improved the stability and efficacy of a potential oligonucleotide therapeutic platform in mice.

BRIDGE Innovation and Business Development at UMass Chan Medical School has set aside nearly $2 million in funding for six faculty-led research projects that hold promise for translation to clinical application and commercialization.  

Research by Andrei Korostelev, PhD, and Anna Loveland, PhD, shows that the ribosome plays an unexpected role in the activation of angiogenin, allowing it to cleave transfer RNA, thereby halting protein production. These findings shed new light on angiogenin functioning and may have important implications for the design of cancer therapeutics and neurodegenerative disease treatments.  

UMass Chan Medical School and QurAlis Corporation, a clinical-stage biotechnology company investigating treatments for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, frontotemporal dementia and other neurodegenerative and neurological diseases, have formed a collaboration to investigate an antisense oligonucleotide technology for the potential treatment of fragile X syndrome.  

The LabCentral Ignite community workshop was held on April 24 in partnership with MassBioEd and co-hosted by UMass Chan’s ScienceLIVE.

PhD candidate Seden Bedir moved from Turkey to the U.S. to study at UMass Chan Medical School. She aims to engineer RNA sequences that don’t exist in nature in order to enable mRNA-based therapeutics beyond vaccines. In her free time, she mentors students from Turkey.  

Natick resident and Stanford Online High School student Rebecca Ahn outperformed other local high school students in the final round of the competition on March 16.

STAT News has selected three research teams from UMass Chan to compete in its 2024 STAT Madness competition. Members of the public are invited to vote for the best biomedical research from 2023. The first round of voting, which will narrow the field from 64 to 32, has begun.

Students will be competing for the Andrew Sheridan Young Neuroscientist Award and an all-expense paid trip to participate in the 2024 USA National Bee at the University of Central Florida in April. 

Rett syndrome is a rare genetic neurological disorder that occurs primarily in girls, eventually robbing them of the ability to speak, walk or use their hands, among other devastating effects.