L AS T WO RD | P E G E E N H O P K I N S
The Fight Against Deadly Fungus Life-threatening fungal infections are on the rise, according to the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. Hospitalizations rose more than 8 percent a year from 2019 to 2021, and the infections themselves can be hard to treat — and diagnose. Last year, Seton Hall’s 3B Lab received an extremely competitive grant from the National Institutes of Health for research that could fight fungal infections better. Seton Hall magazine editor Pegeen Hopkins spoke with the head of the lab, Gregory Wiedman, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, to learn more.
is that this stimulates the immune system. Seton Hall alumnus Robert J. Tancer, Ph.D. ’22, now a postdoc
Tell me about your lab: the 3B Lab.
at Rutgers, is helping us do exactly that. In fact, it works
The name reflects my philosophy about the lab’s focus.
well enough in an incubator that we were able to get a
3B stands for biochemistry, biophysics and biomaterials.
patent on it.
It emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature of what we do. We use techniques from all these disciplines. Our current focus is on addressing infectious diseases; we work a lot with fungi and a bit with bacteria, finding ways to combat them and keep people healthy and safe.
What’s next? We worked with the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps Program to study the potential market for our peptide. We asked infectious disease doctors and nurses what changes they would like to see in their
Why is this interdisciplinary work important?
treatment of patients. We talked to people who understand
There was the assumption that once scientists found a
the financials and to people in insurance to understand
drug to treat a disease, that was it, it was solved. What has
how these things would be covered. I hope to apply that
happened over time is that many microbes — and even
new business model, for either the peptide or for other
viruses — change. They respond to what we do to stop
molecules. I’d also like to work with other students and
them, and they often change in unpredictable ways. So,
professors who are interested in commercializing their
we need to work with the mindset that these microbes are
own technologies.
always going to change. We must keep up!
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far is develop several small molecules called peptides that block a certain enzyme, and what we’re trying to prove
How do bioengineering and biophysics fit in?
You received an NIH grant. What does it entail?
Bioengineering and biophysics have gone into the design
I came up with the idea with my colleague at Rutgers,
of membrane-active peptides that can interact with a cell
Chaoyang Xue, to address what happens when you change
membrane to open holes in it. A former student, Cristina
the composition of molecules on the outside versus the
Ventura, was working on a project where we opened the
inside of the fungus Cryptococcus neoformans, which is a
pores of a membrane when shining light on it. This may
leading cause of fungal meningitis. People can encounter it
be useful for drug delivery. And with colleagues at the
through soil or out in nature. The grant is to develop ways
Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia, we’re looking to
to trap lipid molecules on the outside of the cell to enable
see if the molecules can be used for bioremediation to
people whose immune systems are compromised to better
clean up oil spills and water, for example. These are new
fight off the infection. What our lab has been able to do so
research areas that we also hope to explore in the future. n
