Bae Lab focuses on developing multifunctional block copolymer nanoassemblies as nanoparticle drug carriers that can modulate particle properties one at a time (e.g. particle size, shape, surface property, stability, and drug release rates). These nanoassemblies provide tools for not only elucidating mechanisms by which nanoparticle drug carriers distribute in the body, but also delivering various anticancer drugs to metastatic tumors efficiently and safely. Our published and preliminary results suggest that our nanoassemblies have great potential to facilitate the clinical translation of newly emerging drugs for targeted cancer therapy through tumor-targeted delivery and controlled release of the drugs. The Current Research link on the left summarizes our major research achievements at University of Kentucky (UK), current topics, and future directions.
The Chappell laboratory is dedicated to understanding the mechanisms that plants use to make the dizzying array of terpene/isoprenoid compounds. For many years, and like many laboratories, we focused our attention on how plants regulate the biosynthesis of antimicrobial terpene-based phytoalexins. Our interests have expanded from there. Our work utilizes a wide range of experimental strategies including genetic engineering, structure-function comparisons of genes and proteins, and cross-comparisons between many different plants and other organisms.
Coming soon
The fundamental goal of our research is to understand and exploit the enzymes involved in natural product biosynthesis and bacterial resistance with the ultimate objective of developing novel biologically active compounds that target infectious diseases and malignant tumors. We are especially interested in two classes of compounds: the aminoglycoside antibiotics and the nonribosomal peptides. We focus on lung diseases (Tuberculosis), cancer, and Alzheimer's Disease. The research in our laboratory lies at the interface of biology, organic chemistry, and medicine. Tools and strategies from molecular biology, biochemistry, microbiology, as well as synthetic organic and medicinal chemistry are key to our work.
We study mechanisms required for the pathogenesis of infection and cancer and discover novel compounds to inhibit these mechanisms by using a combination of enzymology, structural biology and biophysical chemistry.