The USF College of Medicine is expanding  its ability to study tiny things called “nanoparticles,”  thanks to a $1.39 million federal grant to its USF Nanomedicine Research Center.

     The grant comes from the National Institutes of Health and is funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

     The Nanomedicine Research Center’s  mission is to research areas of nanomedicine that ultimately could treat heart, lung and blood disorders. Research focuses closely on drug delivery and detection of disease cells, as well as integrating nanomedicine to tissue engineering and cell technologies.

     Nanomedicine uses extraordinarily tiny materials – too small to be seen with the naked eye -- to develop innovative ways to detect and treat disease. For example, a researcher might look for ways to use particles small enough to deliver drugs or therapeutic genes inside a tumor cell.

     Shyam Mohapatra, PhD, director of the Nanomedicine Research Center, is doing research using nanoparticles made of chitosan, a substance found in  shrimps, prawns and shellfish. His laboratory has shown that chitosan particles can safely and effectively deliver therapeutic genes into cells lining the lungs and effectively treat lung diseases such as  asthma or lung cancers in mice.

     Another project in the Nanomedicine Research Center has federal funding from the Office of Naval Research to develop ways to turn stem cells into blood cells.

     “In the battlefield, there’s never enough blood,” said Dr. Mohapatra. “This technology is very futuristic. It could lead to the development of devices that would be like a wristwatch with stem cells in it that could travel into your bloodstream and become blood cells” in case of injury.

     This grant, for a two-year period, will enable the Nanomedicine Center to hire one new faculty member and three support staff. Dr. Mohapatra, who also is the Mabel & Ellsworth Simmons Professor of Allergy & Immunology, expects the new personnel to add to the center’s ability to conduct interdisciplinary research between faculty in Medicine with those in basic sciences such as chemistry, physics, and biology and in engineering.

     -- Story by Lisa Greene, USF Health Communications