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Chemistry professor gets $205,500 NIH grant to create molecules in fight against disease

July 25, 2006

For immediate release - July 25, 2006 Contact: Nina Lentini (860) 439-2505; nina.lentini@conncoll.edu

Connecticut College professor gets $205,500 NIH grant to create molecules in fight against disease

NEW LONDON, Conn. - A Connecticut College professor and his undergraduate students are hoping that their failures lead to success in the battles against cancer, arthritis, asthma and HIV.

Timo Ovaska, Hans & Ella McCollum-Vahlteich ´21 Professor of Chemistry, and four students are working this summer to create molecules in a campus lab that the National Cancer Institute (NCI) wants to test to see if they can be used therapeutically.

"Our work involves a lot of failures," he said, "but that is the norm. We have to weed them out."

This month, he received a $205,500 grant from the National Institutes of Health to support his research. The grant is completely federally funded. 

Ovaska, who has been with Connecticut College since 1990, centers his research on organic synthesis, a process that allows chemists to prepare complex materials in a rational fashion from simple precursors.

"We are building molecular structures that are similar to natural molecules called frondosins," he said. "These molecules were recently isolated from a Micronesian marine sponge and found to have biological activity against interleukin-8 (IL-8)." IL-8 is a peptide involved in a several inflammatory disorders, such as arthritis, asthma and other lung diseases.   Ovaska said the team has recently developed "some novel chemistry that seems to be particularly well suited for the synthesis of the frondosin class of natural products." His team uses nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy and mass spectrometry to confirm structures of the molecules that are synthesized.   The NCI will perform biological testing on all the molecules. It is possible, Ovaska said, that some of these molecules will serve as starting points for the development of new medicines.   "People generally know that a lot of drugs have their origins in terrestrial plant sources but what they don´t know is that a lot of the current natural product research is focused on finding bioactive molecules from various marine organisms," said Ovaska. "There a real ´quest for drugs from the sea´ nowadays. Unfortunately, those materials found to be medically useful are typically produced only in tiny amounts, making their harvesting from these natural sources viable only on scales so large as to be ecologically unacceptable.   "Organic synthesis most feasibly generates these products in quantities sufficient for full biological evaluation. That´s what we are trying to do, focusing on a particular class of compounds, the frondosins."   Ranked among the most selective private liberal arts colleges in the nation, Connecticut College enrolls 1,900 men and women from 42 states and 41 countries. The college is known for putting the liberal arts into action through interdisciplinary studies, international programs, funded internships, student-faculty research and service learning. Founded in 1911, the college operates under an 84-year-old honor code. The college is located at 270 Mohegan Ave, New London, about two hours by car from Boston and New York. The 750-acre campus is an arboretum overlooking Long Island Sound. For more information, visit www.connecticutcollege.edu.

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Editors: Ovaska is a Waterford resident.

For more information contact: Amy Sullivan (860) 439-2526; amy.sullivan@conncoll.edu