NIH grant backs Rice lab’s sickle cell disease research
July 18, 2023
Rice University bioengineer Gang Bao and his team have won a grant from the National Institutes of Health to address critical questions surrounding the safety and efficacy of using gene editing to treat sickle cell disease.
Rice chemist wins $3.2M National Cancer Institute grant
July 17, 2023
Rice University chemist Han Xiao has won a $3.2 million research project (R01) grant from the National Cancer Institute to develop the first tissue-specific epigenetic inhibitor drug to treat bone metastasis.
Light-activated molecular machines get cells ‘talking’
July 10, 2023
Rice University scientists have used light-activated molecular machines to induce cell-to-cell calcium signaling, revealing a powerful new strategy for drug design. This technology could lead to improved treatments for people with heart problems, digestive issues and more.
Reporters broadcast live, on-the-scene, inside living cells
July 10, 2023
Synthetic biologists from Rice University and Princeton University have demonstrated “live reporter” technology that can reveal the workings of signaling networks in living cells with far greater precision than current methods. The first-of-its-kind reporting tool can show how quickly signaling networks respond and how responses vary from cell to cell in time and space.
Rice U.’s Songtao Chen wins NSF CAREER Award
July 5, 2023
Songtao Chen, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University, has won a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Award to advance the development of quantum networks by leveraging point defects in silicon.
New enzyme could aid anticancer drug development
June 27, 2023
Retracing nature’s steps, Rice University engineer Xue Gao and her team mapped out the full series of enzyme-powered reactions a marine fungus uses to produce a complex molecule with anticancer properties. In the process, the Gao lab uncovered the first fungal enzyme of its kind known to break an amide bond.