Collaborative Projects Launched 2022-23 between UCSC - HBCU Faculty

UCSC & Norfolk State Univ

 Project title  Anti-platelet investigations into the natural products of native marsh grasses

Goals The research team will investige how plant derived small molecules can lead to new therapeutics. 

UCSC & Fisk Univ.

 Project title  Adapting hydrogels to anchor ovarian cancer cells

Goals The research team will utilize mass spectrometry (MS) to  explore ways in which hydrogels can be modified so that cells can adhere to the surface or within the gel itself. The project will also involve ensuring flexibility remains in the hydrogels so that the adhered cells can be stretched for subsequent expansion  MS experiments. 

UCSC & Fisk Univ.

 Project title  Exploring Conditions to Enhance the Rate of Metal-Catalyzed Olefin Metathesis 

Goals Olefin Metathesis will be Utilized to Break Down the All-carbon Chains of some Persistent Commodity Waste Plastics

UCSC & North Carolina Central Univ.

 Project title  Investigating the antibiotic and anticancer activities of actinobacterial natural products

Goals The research team will grow and extract various bacterial strains, perform various separation steps, and characterize small molecules that possibly contain useful antibiotic and/or anticancer activities. 

UCSC & Hampton University

 Project title  Discovery of antiproliferative active small molecules by using breast cancer cells to screen diverse chemical libraries

Goals The project team will harness technologies available in the UCSC Chemical Screening Center (https://csc.ucsc.edu). An anticipated outcome will be the identification of molecules as potential leads for anti-cancer therapeutics.