Four graduate students have been selected as Fellows for the long-running Chemistry-Biology Interface (CBI) Training Grant at UCLA, while two have been chosen as Associate trainees. The Fellows are Izaiah Cole (Lawson lab), Elena Hauf Pisoni (Guo lab), Lilith Schwartz (Kamariza lab, who previously participated in the training grant as an Associate), and Sarah Singleton (Conway lab). Graduate students Ben Janda (Garg lab) and Shruti Sharma (Stoyanova lab) have been selected as Associate trainees.
The CBI Training Grant is an NIH-funded multidisciplinary training program at UCLA which trains students in the underlying chemical principles which govern biological processes with the goal of equipping students with the chemical knowledge to solve biological problems. Students and faculty from the Department of Physical Sciences, Life Sciences, and Schools of Engineering and Medicine participate in the program.
Recent graduates Nina Harpell (Rodriguez lab), Eric Pang (Rodriguez lab), and Kaitlin Hartung (Sletten lab) recently presented their research at the annual CBI Day Symposium, where new students were also welcomed to the program.
For more information on CBI, please visit cbi.chem.ucla.edu or contact christinaung23@g.ucla.edu.
About the 2024-2025 CBI Fellows:
Izaiah Cole is a second-year Chemical Biology graduate student in Professor Michael Lawson’s group at UCLA. He received his B.S. in Biochemistry/Chemistry at the University of California, San Diego. Most of his initial research experience stemmed from Biotechnology company, Regulus Therapeutics, where he conducted research to provide pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties of various microRNA therapeutic drugs.
At UCLA, Izaiah’s research is focused on elucidating the regulation mechanism of translation termination. As 11% of all inheritable diseases are caused by the introduction of a premature stop codon in the mRNA transcript, there has been a large therapeutic interest in overcoming premature stop codons to produce functional, full-length proteins. Prior research suggests that this regulation may be dictated by the kinetics of the peptidyl-tRNA bond hydrolysis and being able to establish what prerequisites are necessary for downstream processes are key for accomplishing this research. His work utilizes single molecule fluorescence with an in vitro reconstituted yeast translation system that directly tracks protein kinetics, dynamics, and interactions in real time. With this, he plans to identify and assess factors that influence termination kinetics and dissect that mechanism by which termination regulates downstream processes.
Elena Hauf Pisoni is a second-year Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology (BBSB) graduate student in Professor Feng Guo’s group. She received her B.A. double-majoring in Biochemistry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of San Diego. During her time there she researched non-cognate binding of amino acids and RNA-PNA duplexes to aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases using biochemical and computational methods in the lab of Professor Anthony Bell.
At UCLA, Elena’s research focuses on targeting disease-related precursor microRNAs (pre-miRNAs) with small molecules. Although proteins have been the main targets of therapeutics, they account for only a small fraction (~1.5%) of the human genome, indicating a mere 0.05% of the human genome has been “drugged.” In contrast, non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), including miRNAs, make up an estimated 70-90% of the human genome. miRNAs regulate gene expression and key cellular processes, and disruptions in their function can lead to disease, making them promising therapeutic targets. Elena is using X-ray crystallography and other biochemical methods to probe and determine high-resolution 3D structures of pre-miRs and their complexes with small molecules. This will reveal new RNA-small molecule binding mechanisms, aid in developing targeted therapies, and advance RNA structure determination methods. Understanding these interactions will drive novel RNA-targeted drug discoveries.
Lilith Schwartz is a third-year chemistry Ph.D. student on the chemical biology track at UCLA. She has a B.A. in chemistry and a minor in music theory from Vassar College. At Vassar, Lilith worked in Professor Krystle McLaughlin’s biochemistry and structural biology lab studying bacterial proteins involved in transferring antibiotic resistance genes. Her other scientific pursuits included making and serving liquid nitrogen ice cream in the chemistry building every week.
Following her interest in antibiotic resistance and infectious diseases, Lilith works in Professor Mireille Kamariza’s lab in the UCLA bioengineering department. In the Kamariza Lab, Lilith studies drug effects and dormancy in Mycobacteria. Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB), which is the global leading infectious killer, only briefly overtaken by COVID-19. Lilith is working to develop rapid diagnostics for drug resistant TB infections using solvatochromic trehalose conjugate probes. To gain insight into latent TB infections, she is also studying different metabolic states of Mycobacteria by observing cell wall components and identifying modifications present under nutrient starvation and other stress conditions.
Sarah Singleton is a second year Biochemistry, Molecular, and Structural Biology (BMSB) graduate student in Professor Stuart Conway’s group. She received her B.S. in Biochemistry at Simmons University, where she used focused ultrasound to detect intracranial cavitation in traumatic brain injury. For the next two years, she, through the support of the Harvard Research Scholar Initiative, studied immunological and genetic drug targets in the Biological Small Molecule Drug Development department at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research.
At UCLA, Sarah’s research centers around the utilization of cereblon-recruiting molecular glues. Recently, the field of chemical biology has looked to zinc finger motifs for targeted protein degradation, mediated by thalidomide-based immunomodulatory drugs (IMiDs). Sarah’s project centers around the fundamental development of a mutant zinc finger and substituted immunomodulatory drug (IMiD) pair. She is using this system to temporarily degrade the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) in CAR T-cells, in an effort to ameliorate the symptoms of Cytokine Release Syndrome (CRS), a common and often fatal on-target side-effect of CAR T-cell therapy. Ultimately, the development of this technology will aid in the interrogation of protein function and drug discovery for proteins previously considered undruggable.
Ben Janda is a second-year Chemistry graduate student in Professor Neil Garg’s laboratory. In 2023, He received his B.S. in Chemistry from Chapman University where he researched organocatalysts’ ability to perform reduction reactions in Professor Allegra Liberman-Martin’s group.
Since joining the program at UCLA, Ben has worked on the chemistry of reactive strained intermediates called strained cyclic allenes. These strained intermediates are generated in situ and cannot be isolated, but can be trapped through cycloadditions. Reactivity of this nature enables the rapid formation of complex, saturated, polycyclic structures that are prevalent in many biologically active molecules. Ben is currently investigating an unreported class of strained cyclic allenes that he aims to utilize in the synthesis of complex, biologically active targets.
Shruti Sharma is a second-year Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology (BBSB) graduate student in Professor Tanya Stoyanova’s lab. She earned her B.S. in Bioengineering from UCLA, where she developed hydrogel biomaterials for tissue engineering, drug delivery, and 3D cell culture in Professor Tatiana Segura’s lab. She then joined Professor Amy Rowat’s lab to study the effects of stress hormones on cancer metastasis. After graduation, she worked at A2 Biotherapeutics, developing logic-gated dual-receptor CAR T cell therapies that target tumor cells by exploiting loss of heterozygosity.
For her graduate work, Shruti is focused on working at the intersection of biochemistry and cancer biology to develop therapeutics for late-stage epithelial cancers. Although these malignancies comprise 80-90% of all cancer cases, they do not consistently express the receptors targeted by current therapies and still pose a significant clinical challenge. The Stoyanova lab has previously identified Trop2 as a tumor marker overexpressed in major epithelial tumor types, including prostate, breast, and lung. Shruti is currently focused on characterizing and developing novel anti-Trop2 antibody-conjugated tools with improved safety and efficacy to currently existing agents against epithelial cancer.
Article by Christina Ungermann, CBI Administrator, christinaung23@g.ucla.edu.
