28 NOVEMBER 2023
We welcome a new postdoctoral scientist, Qingying Yang. She recently received her PhD from East China University of Science and Technology. Qingying will be working on collaborative projects with Sheng Lab, focusing on long RNA oligonucleotides containing naturally occurring modifications. She will also supervise undergraduate students in the lab.
1 NOVEMBER 2023
A new postdoctoral scientist, Muhammad Saadiq, just joined our group. He arrived from Pakistan, where he was an Assistant Professor in Chemistry at Bacha Khan University. Saadiq’s appointment is funded by Shasqi, Inc. He will be working on our collaborative anticancer drug delivery projects. He will be a bioinformatics expert in the lab.
10 OCTOBER 2023
Bhoomika Pandit presented her graduate research at 14th Annual Life Sciences Research Symposium. She gave an amazing presentation about temporal control of CRISPR-Cas9 activity, but the ignorant awards committee failed to recognize excellence of her work and did not give her a well-deserved award. Oh well, maybe next time…
21 MAY 2023
Justa Fidelity Sentre, who prefers to be called Nana Akua, joined our lab in the Spring of 2023. Nana Akua received her MS degree from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana. Prior to joining our program, Nana Akua worked in forensic chemistry. Her PhD studies will focus on the chemical ligation of RNA oligonucleotides.
24 MARCH 2023
The Royzen research group was awarded an ‘Opportunity Grant’ from the Jackson Laboratories, titled: Synthesis of RNA oligonucleotides by chemical ligation. Our goal will be to develop a chemical alternative to ‘splint ligation’ towards construction of RNA oligonucleotides containing site-specifically incorporated modifications.
15 June 2022
Congratulations to Alyssa Hoy who successfully defended her PhD dissertation, titled: Synthesis of oligonucleotides containing unnatural backbone and regulation of CRISPR activity using IEDDA chemistry. Aly’s most recent work, describing CRISPR experiments that utilize guide RNAs containing nucleobase modifications has been published in CRISPR Journal.
15 August 2022
Congratulations to Amir Agharezaee who submitted his MS dissertation, titled: Fluorescent labeling of ribosomal RNA in live mammalian cells. After graduating fom the University at Albany, Amir is planning to pursue a career in analytical chemistry in the United States. Amir is the second MS student to graduate from our lab.
21 MARCH 2022
Royzen Lab has recently been in the news that highlight our collaboration with a San Francisco start-up Shasqi, Inc. Our collaboration resulted in a development of a Click Activated Protodrugs Against Cancer (CAPAC) platform, which is currently being evaluated in Phase I clinical trials for the treatment of advanced solid tumors.
1 FEBRUARY 2022
The Royzen research group was awarded an R21 grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). The title of the grant is: Chemical synthesis and non-chromatographic purification of long RNA oligonucleotides containing naturally occurring modifications. Our collaborators, Dr. Jia Sheng and Dr. Gaby Fuchs are co-investigators on this award.
23 DECEMBER 2020
Royzen Lab has recently been in the news that highlight our collaboration with a San Francisco start-up Shasqi, Inc. Our collaboration resulted in a development of a Click Activated Protodrugs Against Cancer (CAPAC) platform, which is currently being evaluated in Phase I clinical trials for the treatment of advanced solid tumors.
15 DECEMBER 2020
Congratulations to Muhan He who successfully defended her PhD dissertation, titled: Development of chemical methods for oligonucleotide purification, paramagnetic labeling and synthesis of DNA-based advanced materials. Muhan’s most recent work, describing non-chromatographic purification of synthetic RNA has been uploaded to bioRxiv.
3 DECEMBER 2020
Our collaborative work with Shasqi, Inc. resulted in two publications which have been uploaded to bioRxiv and ChemRxiv. These manuscripts are currently undergoing peer review. These papers were recently discussed in a Science Translational Medicine Blog.