University of Pittsburgh
Grant: $198,774 - National Institutes of Health - Aug. 31, 2009
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Award Description: The purpose of this application is to request funds for a Recovery Act Administrative Supplement to increase the tempo of scientific research of NIH Grant R-01 DK078500, 'A New Dimension in Renal Clearance Design Criteria for Dendrimer Nanostructures', create jobs, and stimulate economic development. The specific aim of this supplement is: Synthesize dendrimers with varying surface charge but constant size. Hiring personnel and purchasing an infra red spectrophotometer will enable us to simultaneously accomplishment specific aims 1 and 2 of the parent grant thus increasing the tempo of the parent grant and the efficiency of our laboratory in achieving these specific aims. Currently we can only follow one arm of the synthetic objectives at a time; we must work to accomplish aims 1 and 2 in series or one at a time. This supplement will allow us to more than double our rate of progress by creating a second organic chemist position. Hiring a second organic chemist will enable the simultaneous or parallel pursuit of aims 1 and 2. Synthesizing both sets of dendrimers simultaneously will significantly increase the research tempo or pace. It will also improve the efficiency of personnel downstream from the synthetic arm of the project by opening up a significant bottleneck. Having two organic chemists will provide agents to the analytical chemist and provide reagents to the veterinary technician for testing at a faster pace. In particular, the activities encompassed in this supplement application that were included in the parent application are related to aim 2. The new synthetic chemist will be responsible for the synthesis of dendrimers with varying surface charge but constant size. Scientific Research Tempo Acceleration and Job Creation: This application if successful will speed up the tempo of our research by enabling us to hire an additional organic chemist and purchase an infrared spectrophotometer. This will have an impact of creating jobs and stimulating the economy. The hiring of an additional organic chemist and purchasing of an infrared spectrophotometer will increase not only increase the tempo of our research by enabling us to carry out parallel arms of our synthetic aims simultaneously, but it will also increase the efficiency of all of our personnel. Currently we can only follow one arm of the synthetic objectives at a time; we must work to accomplish aims 1 and 2 in series or one at a time. This supplement will allow us to double our rate of progress. It will also improve the efficiency of personnel downstream from the synthetic arms of the project by opening up a significant bottleneck. Having two organic chemists will provide agents to the analytical chemist and provide reagents to the veterinary technician for testing at a faster pace. Specific to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 the requested funds address two of the acceptable methods for stimulating the economy. These funds enable the hiring for additional staff and for procuring additional needed equipment. The funds enable the hiring of an additional synthetic organic chemist, and the purchase of a Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrophotometer (FTIR) to replace our recently broken and non-repairable instrument. Infrared absorption spectroscopy is one of the essential tools used by organic chemists to characterize compounds. IR is used in addition to NMR, because each technique gives unique information about the structure of molecules. Currently no such FTIR instrument exists in the Hillman Cancer Center, so in order to get IR data we have to make a 60-minute round trip to instruments at the Chemistry Department in the Chevron Building. Having an FTIR instrument in our laboratory again will increase efficiency by enabling immediate on-site preliminary characterization of products.
Project Description: The objective of this American Reinvestment Recovery Act (ARRA) is to hire personnel and purchase equipment that will enable the simultaneous accomplishment of specific aims 1 and 2 and increase efficiencies of the parent grant R-01 DK078500, 'A New Dimension in Renal Clearance Design Criteria for Dendrimer Nanostructures.' The specific aims of the parent grant are: (1) Synthesize dendrimers with varying surface charge but constant size, (2) Synthesize dendrimers of varying size (hydrodynamic radius and constant surface charge, and (3) Determine the pharmacological parameters including clearance pathway, biodistribution, pharmacokinetics, renal clearance rate, and glomerular filtration rate (GFR) of each dendrimer. Currently we can only follow one arm of the synthetic objectives at a time; we must work to accomplish aims 1 and 2 in series or one at a time. This supplement allows us to double our rate of progress by creating a second organic chemist position. Hiring a second organic chemist will enable the simultaneous or parallel pursuit of aims 1 and 2. Synthesizing both sets of dendrimers simultaneously will significantly increase the research tempo or pace. It will also improve the efficiency of personnel downstream from the synthetic arm of the project by opening up a significant bottleneck. Having two organic chemists will provide agents to the analytical chemist and provide reagents to the veterinary technician for testing at a faster pace. We will also purchase a Fourier transform infrared spectrophotometer (FTIR) to replace our recently broken and non-repairable instrument. Infrared absorption spectroscopy is one of the essential tools used by organic chemists to characterize compounds. IR is used in addition to NMR, because each technique gives unique information about the structure of molecules.
Jobs Summary: Prime recipient in process of creating a Postdoctoral Associate position. (Total jobs reported: 0)
Project Status: Not Started
This award's data was last updated on Aug. 31, 2009. Help expand these official descriptions using the wiki below.
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