When my colleague, Dr. Mike Norris, approached me with a biological application of Ruthenium complexes that his inorganic lab synthesizes, it is no surprise that I said yes. I love collaborations that bring together expertise across disciplines and enhance our undergraduates experiences in the research lab; for them to see how molecules get made and analyzed for medicinal applications is quite eye-opening. Plus I have a beautiful cell culture room and a number of cancer cells that are always waiting to be treated with some kind of drug.

I’ve learned a lot in this collaboration and we’ve established some new-to-us protocols. This first manuscript published this week in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, pioneered by Lindsey Paul (BMB ’20) and pushed forward significantly by Khuslen Enkhbold (BMB ’21) and Sydney Robinson (BMB ’22) with assistance from Than Thar Aye (BMB ’22) and Yuna Chung (BMB ’24), really sets the stage for this project. We are excited about all the new directions moving forward – already gathering loads of new data this summer by Auden Wilson (BMB ’25) and Briseily Cejudo (BIOL ’25). 

So cheers to the student authors and to Mike for this publication. Here’s to a fruitful collaboration for years to come!

Use this link through September 1, 2022 to read the article for free.

~jap