Patti Cauble

Administrative Assistant

Madduri Srinivasarao

Lab Manager

Madduri’s projects revolve around medicinal chemistry with a major focus on cancer and inflammatory diseases. He designs and develops novel drug targeting systems for various diseases using the principles of chemistry and biology.

Estela Puchulu-Campanella

Senior Scientist

Estela joined the Low Lab in 2000, and she is currently working in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Estela has publications in various subjects ranging from sickle cell disease, thalassemia, red blood cell aging, regulation of erythrocyte properties by oxygen and phosphorylation, slow release of growth hormone, assembly of the glycolytic metabolon in human and mouse erythrocytes, proton-coupled folate transporter, antimalarial drugs, the dynamics of band 3 during parasite invasion and characterization of a discontinuous SH2 domain in erythrocyte band 3 that regulates red blood cells properties.

Mahalingam Sakkarapalayam Murugesan

Senior Scientist

Maha is developing a wide variety of near-infrared dye conjugates to allow surgeons to more easily visualize tumors during fluorescence-guided surgery. He is also developing dyes to visualize other important organs such as the ureters and nerves.

Bing Bing Wang

Senior Scientist

Bing Bing’s research is mainly focused on cancer immunotherapy. She is using folate-targeted ligands to modify the function of tumor-associated myeloid cells, which express high levels of folate receptor-β. She is also testing the ability of a folate receptor-β antibody to reduce levels of activated macrophages in a mouse model of rheumatoid arthritis. Finally, she also studies the biological properties of newly developed polymers.

Suraj Hettiarachchi

Suraj is currently working on the design and synthesis of novel targeting ligands, small molecule drug conjugates, and imaging agents for cancer, inflammatory, and autoimmune diseases. His projects include development of folate, DUPA, and carbonic anhydrase 9 targeted immunotherapy approaches for cancers.

Yingwen Hu

Yingwen’s research currently focuses on: 1) the development small targeting ligands with magnetic beads for the capture of circulating tumor cells from the blood of cancer patients, and 2) the development of human/mouse monoclonal antibodies that target folate receptor β for the treatment of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.

Stewart Low

Stewart’s research involves a targeted approach to accelerate healing of bone fractures in hopes to reduce the associated morbidity and mortality. This is accomplished by coupling bone fracture targeting ligands with a carefully selected bone anabolic agent. This approach limits off-target exposure of cells in the vicinity of the bone fracture, dramatically increasing fracture healing rates without off-target bone growth.

Mark (Yen-Hsing) Li

Mark’s research focuses on developing non-immunoglobulin based protein scaffolds for tumor targeting. He also works in the area of genome engineering and protein expression.

Loganathan Rangasamy

Loganathan’s research focuses on: 1) Receptor-targeted delivery of biologics such as siRNA, miRNA, protein, and DNA, 2) Developing endosomal escape agents, and 3) Preparing cell penetrating peptides as delivery vehicles for biologics.

Daniel Sheik

Dan's research is focused on the development of fluorescent dyes for the detection of nerves during surgical procedures. Illuminating nerve fibers in the body should reduce the risk of nerve damage that can lead to symptoms ranging from numbness and sensitivity to chronic pain or paralysis. Another research interest of Dan's involves the development of small molecules through computer-aided drug design. These molecules are targeted to a subset of immune cells and have potential as a novel immunotherapy against cancer.

Spencer Gardeen

Spencer is developing new targeting molecules that can be used for the treatment and imaging of cancer and for organ transplantation. He utilizes computer-based docking programs to carry out structure-based drug design.

Weichuan Luo

Weichuan is working on developing immunotherapies using transgenic T cells.

Xin Liu

Xin’s research focuses on the design, synthesis and biological testing of ligand-targeted therapeutic agents for the treatment of infectious diseases. The major part of his work is developing high affinity ligands that specifically target virus envelop proteins. By conjugating these ligands with other potent drugs, these molecules have the ability to either kill or inactivate the virus as well as the virus infected cells.

Yong Gu Lee

Yong is developing cancer immunotherapies by engineering human T cells to recognize a variety of proteins on tumor cells.

Spencer Lindeman

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a rare, yet lethal disease, with a median survival of only 2-5 years post diagnosis. Despite the high mortality rate, IPF is difficult to diagnose, and there are no effective treatments for IPF. Spencer uses ligand-targeting technology to image IPF in animal models to better understand its pathogenesis, as well as novel approaches to treat the disease.

Isaac Marks

Isaac is working to develop radioactive imaging and therapeutic cocktails for a wide variety of human cancers.

Panae Noomuna

Panae’s is currently studying the anti-malarial activity of imatinib and other Syk inhibitors and their potential synergy with other anti-malarial drugs. He is also investigating the role of erythrocyte membrane protein band 3 in invasion of red cells by the Plasmodium falciparum.

Alyssa Snyder

Alyssa’s research focuses on sickle cell disease, specifically looking at its effects on red blood cell membrane stability. She is working to find ways to prevent membrane destabilization and microparticle formation, which play an important role in the pathophysiology of sickle cell disease.

Mingding Wang

Mingding is working on the targeted delivery of bone-anabolic agents, which are small molecules that promote bone growth and facilitate healing at fracture sites. He creates these compounds by conjugating targeting ligands that are tissue-selective with small molecule bone anabolic agents by self-immolative linkers. He then tests them in vivo for their ability to heal bone fractures.

Boning Zhang

Boning’s research projects focus on developing new cancer therapies include the study of: 1) a natural anti-rhamnose antibody based immunotherapy in folate receptor positive cancers, 2) high affinity ligand and receptor pair mediated control in chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy, and 3) protein scaffold design and screening for potential receptor targets in cancer.

Suilan Zheng

Red blood cells are responsible for carrying oxygen to body tissues and removing carbon dioxide from the body. As the major oxygen carrier in the body, many red blood cell properties are regulated by oxygen. Suilan’s research focuses trying to figure out the molecular mechanism of how oxygen regulates the functions of red blood cells. She is investigating how deoxygenated hemoglobin binding affects the function of key membrane proteins in the red blood cell.

Jacquelyn Kelty

Jackie’s research is currently focused on developing magnetic beads coated with small targeting ligands to capture rare circulating tumor cells from the blood of cancer patients.

Jeffery Nielsen

Jeff is developing new targeting methods to deliver therapeutics to bone. He is doing so by developing different targeting ligands and comparing their abilities to deliver bone anabolic agents to the bone. The main focus is delivering bone anabolic agents to the fracture site, in order to accelerate bone fracture healing. His research also focuses on indentifying new bone anabolic agents.