NIH OxCam Scholar Advances Cancer Detection using Nanodiamonds

NIH Oxford-Cambridge Program Scholar Alumna, Dr. Ambika Bumb’s biotech company, Bikanta, has developed nanodiamond-based technology that assists in the early detection of cancer.  Through the use of fluorescent nanodiamonds, medical imaging is enhanced, allowing cancer to be detected in deep tissue.  Bikanta’s nanodiamonds are superior optical probes that emit a bright and stable signal, that is customizable (to target specific diseases) and nontoxic.

Ambika graduated from Georgia Tech and obtained her doctorate from Oxford while on the prestigious Marshall Scholarship. She completed two post-doctoral fellowships at the National Cancer Institute and National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute where she developed Bikanta’s nanodiamond-based technologies.  She has received numerous scholarships and awards for excellence in engineering and was profiled in 2011 in Nature as a successful young scientist on the fast-track. Her work in the areas of nanomedicine and diagnostics has led to multiple patents and many publications.

You can read more about how Ambika founded Bikanta here:

http://www.femalefounderstories.com/ambika-bumb.html

You can read more about Bikanta’s nanodiamond technology here:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/07/bikantas-tiny-diamonds-find-cancer-before-it-spreads/

NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholar wins MacArthur Fellowship

The International Biomedical Research Alliance is proud to congratulate a remarkable NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program graduate, Danielle Bassett (nee Perry), on her recent acceptance to the MacArthur Fellows Program.  The MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction. The MacArthur Fellows Program is intended to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations. In keeping with this purpose, the Foundation’s “no strings attached” award is made directly to individuals rather than through institutions.  Each fellowship comes with a stipend of $625,000 to the recipient, paid out over five years.  Typically 20 to 30 Fellows are selected each year. In 1981 when the first class of fellows was named, the media coined the nickname “Genius Grant” to describe the fellowship.

Home-schooled from age 4 through high school, Dani received her B.S. (2004) from Pennsylvania State University and was a member of Penn State’s Schreyer Honors College. She received a Certificate of Postgraduate Study (2005) from the University of Cambridge through a Winston Churchill Scholarship and Ph.D. (2009) from the University of Cambridge through the Alliance supported NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program where her research in Meyer-Lindenberg’s NIMH lab focused on the human brain, particularly involving alterations in neural circuitry underlying psychiatric disease.  At Cambridge, her mentors were Professor Thomas Duke (now deceased) in Physics and Professor Edward Bullmore in Experimental Psychology. She was a postdoctoral associate (2009–2011) and a Sage Junior Research Fellow (2011–2013) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before joining the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where she is currently the Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation in the Departments of Bioengineering and Electrical & Systems Engineering.  She is considered is one of the foremost investigators of neural networks designed to understand how humans think.

It is important to note that Dani completed her Ph.D. in the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program in just under the average time to completion rate of 4.0 years. When asked about Dani and the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program, mentor Dr. Ed Bullmore noted that “The quality of the students in the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program is truly outstanding. These are some of the smartest young people at the start of their careers in science and it is a privilege to work with them. But even by the exalted standards of this program, Dani Bassett was exceptional. She was remarkably productive, scientifically innovative and efficiently focused. She wrote some terrific papers herself in Cambridge and she was also a generous and effective collaborator and guide to other students in the lab. I was very proud but not very surprised when she won the MacArthur award. I think the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars Program deserves a lot of credit for creating a unique opportunity for highly talented people like Dani to make a flying start to their lives in science and medicine.”

Three NIH Oxford/Cambridge Scholars Awarded for Research

During the NIH Global Doctoral Partnerships 2014 Annual Research Colloquium, three members of the NIH Oxford/Cambridge Scholars Program were recognized for their outstanding research.  They are:

Prantik Kundu  – Innovation Award for Novel Solutions in Biology or Medicine for discoveries of unusual importance, application, or magnitude that make use of new or unusual methods, paradigms or approaches to solve important problems in biology or medicine

Mentors: Dr. Peter Bandettini(NIMH) and Dr. Ed Bullmore at Cambridge. Studying the dynamics of brain function measured by fMRI. In a recent PNAS paper, Prantik developed a novel method to improve the signal of fMRI brain images using a multiecho technique, leading to improvement in connectivity maps of the brain to better understand and map neural activity. A recent graduate, Prantik will be starting a faculty position at Mount Sinai this Fall.

Katherine Deigan Warner – Basic Science Award for Discoveries in Cellular and Molecular Biology for discoveries of fundamental cellular, molecular, or genetic  processes using model systems that advance scientific understanding of biological processes in higher organisms

Mentors: Dr. Adrian Ferre-D’Amare(NHLBI) and Dr. Chris Abell, Cambridge. Understanding the structural and functional relationship of RNA riboswitches. In a recent Chemical Biology paper, Katherine studied RNA structural changes upon site-specific binding of various small molecule fragments, aiding in understanding how potential drug candidates can inhibit RNA riboswitches function by structural changes induced upon drug binding.

Christopher Wassif – Translational  Award for Advances in Medical  Science awarded for advances in the field of medical science that move fundamental discoveries from the bench to the bedside

Mentors: Dr. Forbes Porter (NICHD) and Prof. Frances Platt, Oxford. How cholesterol affects childhood development. A recent Clinical Genetics paper, with Chris as the senior corresponding author, focused on using DNA exome sequencing to understand the population genetics and carrier frequency of a rare genetic disease, Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome. Demonstrating the importance of exome sequencing in translational research to determine more accurate risk assessment of genetic diseases.