By Barbra Rodriguez | Photos by Erin McCarley
Anthrax Cure
Dr. Jennifer Maynard
Even before letters laced with the deadly anthrax bacterium drew national attention in 2001, Dr. Jennifer Maynard (PhDChE ’02) had been studying treatments for anthrax infection.
As a graduate student working in 1998 under the guidance of professors Drs. George Georgiou and Brent Iverson, Maynard used a technology called “phage display” to identify a protein antibody that protects against anthrax. Evaluating thousands of proteins, she finally isolated the one that could attach to the critical toxin and remove it from the body.
After the antibody protein kept animals from dying in a laboratory experiment conducted at the Southwestern Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio, New Jersey-based Elusys Therapeutics licensed it and is now developing a treatment for human anthrax.
Now a member of the chemical engineering faculty, Maynard continues to study genetic engineering approaches to address human diseases.
Nerve Repair
Dr. Christine Schmidt
Dr. Christine Schmidt (BSChE ’88) joined the biomedical and chemical engineering faculties in 1996. After four years of work in the laboratory, she developed a detergent solution that “simplifies” nerve tissue and thus makes it less likely to be rejected in a transplant patient.
Once Schmidt found that the simplified, or acellular, nerve tissue worked well in animals, she participated in a sponsored research project with Axogen Inc., a Gainesville, Fla., company. As part of the Axogen project, Schmidt’s lab developed a technique to reduce human nerve tissue to the simpler form, which still preserves the delicate tube-like structures of the nerve. Axogen obtained an exclusive license on Schmidt’s technology and combined her detergent-based approach with technology developed at the University of Florida to enhance nerve regeneration.
The procedure has already led to improvements in healing after nerve injury. This summer a 38-year-old man who had lost the ability to move muscles in part of his face received a new facial nerve during surgery performed by a team from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.