Bowers Lab News
May 2022
- The lab has been awarded a research grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF), entitled “Controlling Protein Post-translational Modification by Separating Affinity and Catalysis in Designer Enzymes.” This will support research carrying on from our collaboration with Brian Kuhlman and previously funded by the Eshelman Institute for Innovation.
- The lab held our second ever lab retreat with a day of research talks and proposals followed by some rope work.
September 2021
- Our collaborative grant on “EGFR-directed Chimeric siRNAs for Dual KRAS+Myc Targeting” with Chad Pecot has been selected for funding by Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center
May 2021
- The lab has received a grant from the Eshelman Institute for Innovation for a project in collaboration with Bryan Roth, entitled “Innovative Technology for Selecting Nucleic-Acid Encoded Libraries (NELs) Against Membrane Proteins.”
October 2020
- Congratulations to Steven Fleming for successfully defending his Ph.D. thesis. Steven will be moving to Evanston, IL to join former lab member Jon Bogart in the lab of Michael C. Jewett at Northwestern University.
July 2020
- Congratulations to Kelly Bird for successfully defending her Ph.D. thesis. Kelly will be starting at KBI BioPharma, here in the Triangle.
June 2020
- Double congrats to lab member, Bree Iskandar, who received $25K from the Eshelman Institute for Innovation for her proposed project entitled, “Exploiting Promiscuous tRNA Synthetases to Identify Non-Canonical Peptide Inhibitors of KRAS via mRNA Display.” Along with this grant, she has been recognized as a recipient of the Rankin Innovator Acceleration Award to support her participation in entrepreneurial and business training opportunities.
March 2020
- The lab welcomes a new graduate student, Jarrett Pelton (CBMC). Jarrett comes to us from St. John Fisher College in Rochester, NY, and is excited to be working on cell-free biosynthesis and mRNA display.
August 2019
- Congratulations to Jon Bogart for successfully defending his Ph.D. thesis. Jon is headed to the mid-West to work on a joint project between the labs of Martin Burke (University of Illinois) and Michael C. Jewett (Northwestern University).
April 2019
- The lab welcomes two new graduate students: Bree Iskandar (BBSP) and Matt Bowler (CBMC).
July 2018
- The Bowers Lab celebrates six years of cutting edge science and training with the labs first retreat, involving research talks, new ideas, and team building at the UNC Outdoor Education Center and Ropes Course.
- We say goodbye and good luck to Dr. Swapnil Ghodge, who is headed to San Francisco, CA, to start his position as Senior Scientist at Genentech.
April 2018
- Warm welcomes to Tory Haberman (CBMC) and Matt Fleming (BBSP), two new graduate students who have just joined the lab.
- Alex Yankalunas is awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) for research in the lab this summer.
- The lab has been awarded a second NIH grant! Our work on the antibiotic activity of thiopeptides in collaboration with Miriam Braunstein in UNC Microbiology was recently awarded an NIH Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant (NIH R21) for $250,000 over 2 years.
February 2018
- The lab welcomes postdoc Nick Kramer from Gregory Dudley’s lab at Florida State University.
September 2017
- The group has been awarded a major grant from the NIH! Our work on natural product-based macrocycles was awarded an NIH Maximizing Investigator Research Award (R35-MIRA) for $1.25M over 5 years. Read the story here: https://pharmacy.unc.edu/news/2017/12/07/bowers-receives-1-9m-nigms-outstanding-investigator-award/
August 2017
- Pauls paper on the structure and mechanism of peptide modifying radical-SAM enzyme was published in J. Am. Chem. Soc. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.7b01283.
- Congratulations to Rachel Bleich for successfully defending her Ph.D. thesis! Rachel has won a competitive SPIRE Fellowship and will be continuing on at UNC as a postdoctoral fellow in Janelle Arthur’s lab in the Department of Microbiology.
July 2017
- Our collaborative grant on “Developing Therapeutic Peptides Against Chemoresistant Cancer” with Cyrus Vaziri and Ken Pearce has been funded by NCTraCS.
- Jon Bogart wins a competitive GSK Fellowship for his research on thiopeptide antibiotics. Read the story here: https://pharmacy.unc.edu/news/2017/07/19/bogart-earns-gsk-fellowship-for-research-into-new-antibiotics/
- A bit of de ja vu: congratulations to Paul Himes for successfully defending his Ph.D. thesis! We wish him best of luck as he moves on to a postdoc with Professor Seth Rakoff-Nahoum at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital.
June 2017
- Albert gives an invited talk about our research in front of ~1000 attendees at the 25th American Peptide Symposium in Whistler, Canada.
May 2017
- Our collaborative paper with Eric Brustad’s lab was published in ACS Chem. Bio. DOI: 10.1021/acschembio.7b00358.
- Congratulations to lab alum Sarah Jane Basset for being awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Sarah Jane will be starting grad school in chemistry at MIT this Fall.
April 2017
- Congratulations to Steven Fleming, who won an NSF/JSPS EAPSI Fellowship and will be traveling to Tokyo, Japan this summer to work in the lab of Prof. Hiroaki Suga on mRNA display.
- Braxton is awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) for research in the lab this summer.
- Jon is awarded the GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Pre-Doctoral Fellowship for his research on new thiopeptide antibiotics.
- Rachel wins a 2017 Horizon Award from the UNC Graduate School for her research into antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Story here: http://pharmacy.unc.edu/news/2017/04/21/rachel-bleich-wins-unc-grad-school-impact-award/
March 2017
- Albert gives an invited talk about our research at the 2nd U.S.-Japan Seminar on Biosynthesis of Natural Products for Young Researchers in Tokyo, Japan.
- Albert gives an invited talk about our research at Directing Biosynthesis V in Warwick, UK.
August 2016
- Walter and Jon’s new paper on solid-phase peptide synthesis of thiopeptides is accepted for publication in J. Am. Chem. Soc. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.6b05389
- Albert is honored to receive the 2016 Young Investigator Award from the Boulder Peptide Society.
June 2016
- Congratulations to Walter Wever for successfully defending his Ph.D. thesis! We wish him best of luck as he moves on to a postdoc with Professor Eliot Chaikof at Harvard Medical School.
April 2016
- Warm welcomes to Kelly Bird (CBMC) and Steven Fleming (BBSP), two new graduate students who have just joined the lab.
- Swapnil’s paper on Pantocin A biosynthesis is accepted for publication in J. Am. Chem. Soc. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.5b13529
- Sung is awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) for research in the lab this summer.
- Jon is awarded an American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education (AFPE) Pre-Doctoral Fellowship.
March 2016
- Paul’s paper on engineered biosynthesis of sactipeptides is accepted to ACS Chemical Biology. DOI: 10.1021/acschembio.6b00042
November 2015
- Scott’s review on computational methods for handling macrocycles is published in ACS Chemical Biology. DOI: 10.1021/acschembio.5b00663
October 2015
- Congratulations to Scott and his wife on the birth of their son, Greyson Stanley Allen!
August 2015
- Albert presents our research on engineering new natural products at the 2015 Beckman Foundation Sympossium in Irvine, CA.
July 2015
- Albert presents our research on chemoenzymatic synthesis of thiazolyl peptides at the Enzymes, Co-Enzymes, and Metabolic Pathways Gordon Research Conference in Waterville Valley, NH.
April 2015
- Jon Bogart officially joins the lab as a new graduate student.
- Dr. Swapnil Ghodge joins the lab as a postdoc after completing his Ph.D. with Frank Raushel’s lab at Texas A & M University.
- Rachel is awarded an American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education (AFPE) Pre-Doctoral Fellowship.
March 2015
- Scott’s grant application for computer resources from XSEDE (Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment) is funded. Scott’s research will focus on Logical Design of Macrocyclic Antibiotics Using Molecular Dynamics and Docking Simulations.
- Walter and Jon’s paper on characterization of a new class of biosynthetic enzyme is accepted for publication in J. Am. Chem. Soc. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.5b00940
January 2015
- Walter and Nicoleta’s paper in collaboration with the Li lab at UNC is accepted for publication in Angew. Chem. Intl. Ed. DOI: 10.1002/anie.201411667
- Rachel’s paper on our work in collaboration with the Shank lab at UNC is accepted for publication in Proc. Natl. Acad. USA. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1414272112
September 2014
- Rachel travels to Dubrovnik, Croatia to attend the John Innes/Rudjer Bošković Summer School on “Microbial Specialized Metabolites: Origins and Applications”.
August 2014
- The Bowers lab is honored to receive support from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation in the form of a prestigious Beckman Young Investigator Award to Albert. Read about it here: https://pharmacy.unc.edu/bowers-awarded-750000-beckman-young-investigator-award/
July 2014
- Albert presents our research on genome mining at the 2014 Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology Annual Meeting in St. Louis, MO.
- Bowers lab moves to new space in Marsico Hall near the UNC School of Medicine.
May 2014
- Postdoc Scott Allen wins the poster prize for his research at the UNC Research Computing Symposium
- Walter’s review on dithiolopyrrolone synthesis, biosynthesis, and biological activity is published in Natural Product Reports. DOI: 10.1039/C3NP70106A
June 2013
- Albert presents our research on combinatorial biosynthesis in an invited talk at the 2013 Gordon Research Conference on High-Throughput Chemistry and Chemical Biology.
May 2013
- CBMC Graduate students Paul Himes and Rachel Bleich join the lab.
February 2013
- Postdoc Scott Allen joins the lab from University of Pennsylvania.
December 2012
- Walter’s paper on light-activated thioglycosides is published in Organic Letters. DOI: 10.1021/ol302941q
- Postdoc Nicoletta Economou joins the lab from Drexel School of Medicine.
August 2012
- Bowers Lab opens in 1310 Venable Hall at UNC Chapel Hill