Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Defying The Darkness: Countering Cancer With Light, Travis Hankins

Honors Theses

Triple-Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) accounts for upwards of 15% of reported breast cancer cases. This subtype of breast cancer poses a greater threat to those diagnosed as compared to other types of breast cancer due to the lack of treatment options available. Additionally, TNBC grows and spreads faster, tends to be more aggressive, and has a greater chance of recurrence than its counterparts. Altogether, TNBC cases generally have a worse prognosis over other types of breast cancer. Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is currently being researched as a way to treat TNBC. Photodynamic therapy agents are light-activated materials used for localized disease …

Preparation And Cytotoxicity Of Novel Carbon Nano-Onion Materials, Cammie York

Honors Theses

The applications of carbon nanomaterials (CNM), including graphene and its derivatives such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in nanomedicine is well established. These nanomaterials have been widely used as theranostic delivery systems with the potential to deliver bioactive agents and simultaneously detect selectively diseased tissues. A rather underexplored CNM for biomedical imaging and theranostics delivery are carbon nano-onions (CNOs). CNOs are carbon-based nanomaterials that can potentially be used in cancer therapy when they are functionalized. Recent studies on cellular fate of different CNMs, including CNOs, have demonstrated that the surface composition is critical for the in vivo application of these CNM. …

Treating Breast Cancer With Light: The Creation Of Two Photodynamic Therapy Agents, Victoria Lackey

Honors Theses

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a treatment for a wide display of diseases, including cancer, that has become gradually widespread. The procedure requires the usage of photosynthesizing agents, which are activated in the presence of light. One quite successful photodynamic therapy agent is an aromatic structure made up of four pyrrole rings called a porphyrin. This research focused on producing the water-soluble porphyrins, H2TPP-3-PEG-OH and H2TPP-PiperMe-OH, through the attachment of the starting porphyrin, H2TPPC, with 3-polyethyleneglycol and 3-piperidinemethanol, respectively. The novel, water-soluble agent was purified and characterized by infrared spectroscopy (IR), nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), and UV-vis spectroscopy. Purity was …

Assessing Specificity Of Indazole Derivatives As Inhibitors To Cyp2e1, Hannah Hart

Honors Theses

Metabolism of drugs in the human body can yield both desirable and undesirable results. Some of these side-effects are due to drug-drug interactions, drug-diet interactions, or lack of drug specificity. The enzymes that drugs attack are structurally selective and complex; therefore, many drugs are very general in structure and could possibly react with a variety of enzymes. Indazole has been used as a backbone for several drugs as it has the general structure that may react with most P450s. To determine a derivative, or a group of derivatives, of indazole that may be reactive only with cytochrome P450 2El (CYP2El), …

Solid Phase Peptide Synthesis, John Gibson

Honors Theses

Solid phase peptide synthesis is a relatively new biochemical process for polymerization of amino acids. It involves the selection of amino acids, blocking groups, and resins. This procedure was first investigated by R. B. Merrifield in an attempt to simplify previous methods of peptide synthesis. Since other methods involved amino acids, peptide esters, and diketopiperazines, peptide synthesis had been limited by amino acid selection and a host of technical problems. Solid phase synthesis alleviates many of these difficulties and limitations by supplying a faster and simpler stepwise addition of a wide variety of naturally occurring and synthetically prepared amino acids …

The Effect Of Oak Leaves On The Leaching Of Trace Metals From Sand, Thomas Elton Goodwin

Honors Theses

Sand is fairly rich in some common trace metals, notably manganese and iron. However, these metals for the most part are in a state which renders them insoluble in water. It is thought that the presence of organic matter (principally leaves) in the water enhances the dissolution of some of these trace metals into the aqueous solution.

This enhancement of dissolution is generally thought to come about in three main ways: (1) The organic matter present lowers the oxygen content of the water, and the metals are reduced into a soluble form, (2) The organic material, some of which is …